CHAPTER 3: COMFORT WOMEN
3.3 ANALYSIS
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together with the local Korean community, erected a similar monument in Sydney, Australia in 2016. The unveiling ceremony was attended by Korean Council co-representative Yoon Mee-hyang and Seongnam City Mayor Lee Jae-myung (Lee 2016). Memorial statues continue to grow in number around the world wherever Korean communities exist.
3.3 Analysis
According to the analytical framework used in this thesis, Korea’s handling of the Comfort Women issue must be analyzed to determine the extent to which they have remained committed to middlepowerism in three key areas: multilateralism, compromise and exercising leadership toward peaceful resolution.
3.3.1 Multilateralism
Does South Korea favor multilateral solutions on the comfort women dispute in order to show itself as a good international citizen? Since the 1990’s when this issue became a major point of conflict, there has only been once instance in which Korea participated in a multilateral attempt to resolve the dispute. This came in the form of third-party mediation from the United States. Former U.S. President Obama, after months of hard diplomacy, finally brought Park and Abe together in March 2014 to discuss future trilateral cooperation in a high profile meeting at the Hague. From that time onward, representatives of the Obama administration claimed he
“raised the [comfort women] issue in nearly every meeting ‘he’s had with the leaders of Japan and South Korea over the last several years” (Eilperin 2016). These efforts eventually resulted in an agreement between the ROK and Japan in 2015 to officially settle the comfort women problem, but severe domestic backlash in Korea has since made the agreement tenuous.
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Washington’s motivation for bringing these two together was the “Asian Pivot,” the foundation of the United States’ strategy for Asia during the Obama administration. The policy framework operated on the notion of “Forward Deployed Diplomacy” that according to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton required, “strengthening bilateral security alliances; deepening our working relationships with emerging powers, including with China; engaging with regional multilateral institutions; expanding trade and investment; forging a broad-based military presence; and advancing democracy and human rights” (Clinton 2011).
For the strategy to work, America’s partners in the Asia-Pacific had to collaborate more closely. However, frictions over the comfort women issue have long been a barrier to effective strategic coordination between Korea and Japan (Nishino 2017). Without an upgrade to security cooperation between its two major democratic allies in Northeast Asia, the Asia Pivot strategy wouldn’t work.
So it seems that under certain conditions, Korea can be persuaded to engage in multilateralism in order to solve this issue, but it took the leverage of a superpower like the United States to make it happen, and even then, domestic resistance made it difficult. Civil society strongly protests against trilateral cooperation with Japan and the U.S., sometimes violently5.
5 For example, Kim Ki-kong, a pro-North Korean nationalist, is noted for his 2010 attack of the Japanese Ambassador to South Korea and his 2015 attack on the U.S. Ambassador.
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Picture 4: Former Korean comfort women protest summit meeting between U.S. and Japan.
Poster reads: “The US-Japan alliance condemns peace and calls for war!!” The Japan Times6
Without American instigation, it is unlikely Korea would have been able to take the initiative in setting up multilateral talks on this issue given the strong domestic opposition.
Though they may be willing, it seems that Korean leaders are unable to take the lead in engaging in sustained multilateral solutions on this issue.
3.3.2 Compromise
6 https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2015/05/07/national/history/seoul-plans-erect-comfort-women-monument-mark-1945-liberation/#.Wm1VNaiWaM8
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When there’s a chance to make a deal with Japan on comfort women, does Korea offer to negotiate, accept negotiations from the Japanese, or shun compromise altogether? For Korea, the comfort women issue is a personal problem of historical justice that must be solved with Japan bilaterally, but even bilateral meetings have been difficult. Throughout most of here time in office, Park Geun-hye had repeatedly vowed never to meet with Japanese Prime Minister Abe unless Japan demonstrated “sincere repentance for past wrongdoings, though observers have noted that her strong stance on this was likely an attempt to boost her nationalist credentials for the domestic audience" (South China Morning Post 2014). Finally, after years of urging by Obama, Park did hold a friendly summit meeting with Japan’s Abe in November 2015, just a month before her abrupt announcement of the comfort women deal.
Despite this, there are strong indications that the ROK is willing to compromise. Over the presidential terms covered, the Korean government has on repeated occasions demanded
“sincere” apologies from Japan, but has also shown a tendency to downplay and overlook the comfort women issue in favor of maintaining stable ties. Most presidential administrations maintained this posture for as long as possible, until domestic public pressure forced the national government to take a hardline with Japan on the comfort women issue.
The Korean government’s demand for retribution seems to depend on how salient the issue is domestically. For this reason, action on the comfort women issue has largely been led by citizen activism, rather than by state action. So just as in the case of multilateralism, the Korean government may be willing, but unable to negotiate with the Japanese due to strong domestic opposition.
3.3.3 Leadership
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Does Korea exercise leadership to move this conflict in the direction of peace & stability, or do they tend to take provocative actions that aggravate the problems even further? Over the time frame that was analyzed, ROK typically appears willing to overlook this historical issue, and in a few instances, even quietly cooperated with Japan to settle it. However, strong domestic opposition has limited the ROK in seeking more robust and open compromise, or considering multilateral solutions. Additionally, whenever Japanese nationalists and their sympathizers in government openly question the history of comfort women, or when the Japanese government approves textbooks that omit parts of that history, the Korean public’s angry response forces the ROK to respond harshly. Altogether, these factors prohibit the ROK from leading the issue toward a peaceful resolution.
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