Advertisement
Supported by
Embattled at Home, South Korea’s Leader Turns on Japan, Stoking Old HostilitiesImagePresident Moon Jae-in of South Korea, center, at a National Security Council meeting in Seoul, the capital, this month. Midway through his five-year term, Mr. Moon looks more embattled than ever.CreditCreditSouth Korean Presidential Blue House
By Choe Sang-Hun
Aug. 30, 2019
SEOUL, South Korea — Midway through his five-year term, President Moon Jae-in of South Korea appears more embattled than ever. His policy of improving ties with North Korea has stalled. His economy has slowed, and antigovernment protests in Seoul have grown.
Amid such setbacks, it might seem unwise for Mr. Moon to take on another huge external challenge: a trade war with Japan — his country’s third-largest trading partner and colonial ruler from 1910 to 1945 — that has stirred up historical animosities.
But Mr. Moon, who punched back against Japan’s trade restrictions and shocked American diplomats last Thursday by ending an intelligence-sharing deal with Tokyo, is borrowing from the time-honored playbook in South Korean politics: that it often pays to act tough against Japan.
With his presidency struggling, Mr. Moon is moving to rally his supporters by tapping into hostility toward Japan, refusing to back down in the trade fight and deploying the country’s military to assert its territorial claims, analysts say.
“As he struggled with domestic problems, he has opened a new front against Japan, inciting anti-Japanese sentiments in order to consolidate his core support base, which has shown signs of weakening” in recent weeks, said Yun Duk-min, a former chancellor of the Korea National Diplomatic Academy. “He is also using brinkmanship, putting pressure on Japan to back down and at the same time hoping that the United States will intervene.”
The trade war erupted as Mr. Moon has watched the early promises of his presidency fade. He came into office having pledged to tackle skyrocketing household debt, high youth unemployment and stagnant wages. And he pledged to seek talks with North Korea.
But an increase in the minimum wage backfired, failing to prompt demand and forcing many smaller businesses to fire workers or close down. Crowds of young people graduate from universities, only to find themselves jobless. And the heady days when South Koreans credited Mr. Moon with helping bring Kim Jong-un and President Trump together are a fading memory, with talks stalled and North Korea recently ridiculing the South Korean leader as “double-dealing” and “officious.”
The tensions with Japan started boiling up soon after Mr. Moon became president, when one of his first acts was effectively to nullify a 2015 deal to end the decades-old dispute over so-called comfort women — Koreans forced or lured into sexual slavery for Japanese troops during World War II. The tensions then exploded late last year when a South Korean court held Japanese companies responsible for claims stemming from wartime forced labor.
ImageA rally in Seoul on Saturday to denounce Japan’s new trade restrictions on South Korea.CreditChung Sung-Jun/Getty Images
In early July, Tokyo retaliated by beginning to tighten controls on goods exported to South Korea, questioning South Korea’s trustworthiness in handling sensitive security-related products.
in STYLN_email_trump-0_control_STYLN_email_trump
Rather than backing down, South Korea has looked like a country eager to fight.
People marched on the Japanese Embassy. They boycotted Japanese clothes, beers, cosmetics and cars. They curtailed tourist travel to Japan. Two men in their 70s died after setting themselves on fire near the embassy.
On Sunday, South Korea staged a large military exercise around a set of islets at the center of a territorial dispute with Japan, deploying some of the South’s most powerful warships and warplanes along with elite army and navy commandos.
Mr. Moon saw his approval ratings in polls climb in July and early this month as tensions with Japan spiked. But those numbers have begun dropping recently after his appointment of Cho Kuk, one of his closest political allies, as justice minister. The domestic news media has been flooded with allegations of ethical lapses in Mr. Cho’s family.
Analysts see the surprise move to break the intelligence-sharing deal as a way to divert attention from the scandal, even though Mr. Moon’s office denied any connection.
“This was to save Cho Kuk,” said Park Cheol-hee, a professor at Seoul National University’s Graduate School of International Studies. “They needed to create a bigger shock to divert attention from his scandal.”
Others suggest that Mr. Moon decided to break the deal when his overture to Japan for dialogue — delivered through high-level envoys and in a nationally televised speech on Aug. 15 — was met with silence.
Mr. Moon’s government insists that Japan left it with no option but to act resolutely because Japan said it could not trust South Korea.
“Japan continued to ignore us in a clear affront to our national pride and a breach of diplomatic etiquette,” said Kim Hyun-jong, Mr. Moon’s deputy national security adviser.
ImageA South Korean naval ship patrolling around remote islands during a military exercise on Sunday. The islands are claimed by both South Korea and Japan.CreditSouth Korean Navy
The frictions with Japan come as the South Korean economy is being rattled by a trade war between China and the United States. Many South Korean imports are assembled in China and are then shipped to the American market. Mr. Moon’s decision to abolish the intelligence-sharing deal only gave Japan an excuse to tighten the export controls further, analysts said.
“His diplomacy is amateurish and emotional, emphasizing national pride only,” Professor Park said.
South Korea’s actions, especially its decision to abandon the intelligence-sharing agreement, have also exposed Seoul’s fraying alliance with the United States. The deal between Japan and South Korea had become a symbol of the trilateral security architecture that Washington has been struggling to build to counter China and the growing missile threat from North Korea.
Although South Koreans consider the United States their most important ally, they harbor deep misgivings about its attempt to build trilateral security ties. They fear that it gives Japan an excuse to militarize again in the name of countering China and North Korea. Japan’s prime minister, Shinzo Abe, has frequently stirred those fears by voicing what Koreans consider a regressive stance on issues stemming from when Korea was a Japanese colony.
In stirring up resentment against Japan, Mr. Moon is reverting to a strategy that brought him to power in the first place.
In his 2017 presidential campaign, he lashed out at “chinil” — or pro-Japanese — Koreans who he said collaborated with Japanese colonial masters and later thrived under South Korea’s Cold War-era military dictatorship by rebranding themselves as “anti-Communist” or “industrialist” conservatives. To his supporters, a paragon of such Korean families was his impeached conservative predecessor, Park Geun-hye, a daughter of the military strongman Park Chung-hee, a former lieutenant in Japan’s imperial army.
When tensions escalated last month, Mr. Cho, then Mr. Moon’s senior presidential secretary for civil affairs, called those who criticized the president and the court ruling “chinil.”
As the trade dispute intensifies, the Trump administration has seemed unwilling or unable to mediate between its allies Japan and South Korea. Instead, Mr. Trump has doubled down on demands that South Korea pay more for its bilateral military alliance with Washington.
Mr. Trump had emerged as an unlikely hero among progressive supporters of Mr. Moon, as his meetings with North Korea’s leader raised hopes for peace on the peninsula. But that enthusiasm has begun dissipating lately as talks between North Korea and the United States have stalled.
“Progressive South Koreans wonder how long their country should be dragged around,” said Yang Ki-ho, an expert on Korea-Japan relations at Sungkonghoe University in Seoul, referring to a growing fatigue over the Trump administration’s heavy-handed treatment.
A version of this article appears in print on , Section A, Page 10 of the New York edition with the headline: Embattled at Home, South Korea’s Leader Turns on Japan, Stoking Old Hostilities. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | SubscribeRelated Coverage
South Korea Signals End to ‘Final’ Deal With Japan Over Wartime Sex SlavesNov. 21, 2018Image
The $89,000 Verdict Tearing Japan and South Korea ApartFeb. 13, 2019Image
As Japan and South Korea Feud Intensifies, U.S. Seems Unwilling, or Unable, to HelpAug. 4, 2019ImageShow All
Advertisement