Comfort Women statues and threats of terror

Back in Seoul after an unusually long hiatus, I was eager to visit a few places I'd been reading about in the news and blogs. Among them was the Comfort Women statue (or should I say, enforced sex slaves) located right across the street from the Japanese embassy.

So last week I headed there with my Nikon D60 and my iPhone 4. I walked purposefully down the street (I'd been to the embassy a few times, once to purchase a used right-hand drive Toyota Crown back in the 1990s, so I knew where it was). Down the street, I could see several policemen in the area, which is hardly surprising since they are tasked with protecting the various foreign missions, including the embassy of the former occupiers.

But as I approached the statue and stopped in order to position my Nikon, I was told by the senior police officer there, in Korean, that I could not take any pictures of the statue. Obviously I asked why that would be, and he told me there had been threats made to the statue.

Lest someone think that my rusty-from-Hawaii's-ocean-breeze Korean skills may have yielded a comprehension FAIL!, the polite-but-stern senior police officer (who looked to be in his late forties) mentioned the English word "terror" when he reiterated the reason.

I am usually not a confrontational person, though I can be when the situation warrants. This was not one of those times, and I thought that I would try charm and reason (I am very charming when I want to be). I told the guy I am from Seoul but lately I've been studying in Hawaii where I do a Korea news blog, and I'd been reading about this poignant statue — which I support — and I was keen to get a picture. I told them I'd read about the right-wing Japanese asshat (though I didn't say asshat) who had messed with the statue and I was sure was on their minds, but they said their threat was one from the future.

He asked me what my blog was and I used the ambient wifi to quickly type www.rjkoehler.com on my iPhone to show him Monster Island. Fortunately I had something a little less ridiculous than usual as the top post and he did that pensive ajŏshi sigh to show he was going to relent.

Just one picture, he said. That, too, he reiterated.

I quickly had to decide whether I should use the Nikon or the iPhone. The latter had the advantage of instantaneous editing and, with the ambient wifi (I really need to trademark that phrase), I could send it out right away (Blogger has a function where you can send posts via an email to a specially created Blogger address) so I went with that.

I asked the senior police officer and his young juniors if they'd like to be in the picture. They declined and parted like the Red Sea. I got my lonesome picture of the lonesome girl, with a banner to An Chunggŭn in the background.

Though they didn't ask, I showed them the picture and went on my way (I was late for a meeting at a 1970s-ish tabang with a friend who works with the mayor).

Before I blogged the little incident, though, I started to wonder if this was prudent. I emailed The Marmot, Zen Kimchi, and a couple others and asked if they knew anything about a no-photos regulation. They said they didn't, mentioned it's in a public area and there should be no reason it can't be photographed, and said I should go ahead and blog about it (if the cautious Marmot says go ahead, I figure there's nothing to worry about; I hope I don't end up in some Michael Breen-esque legal matter... I'm too pretty for prison).

So this was all on my mind when I read the news, a few days later, that someone Korean asshat decided, in protest of the Japanese right-wing asshat, to drive his truck into the Japanese embassy.

Could it be that the "terror" threat they were worried about was a domestic one? And did the police momentarily mistake me for an asshat?

...

Wikileaks: US ambassador says Koreans "behaving irrationally" on Tokto

And they "may do something crazy"! So said the US ambassador to Japan, in 2006.

From the Wikileaks site itself:

Classified By: Ambassador J. Thomas Schieffer. Reason: 1.4 (b)(d).

¶1. (S) At 11:00 a.m. on April 20, the Ambassador spoke
with VFM Yachi, at Yachi's request, regarding simmering
tensions between Japan and the ROK over a planned Japanese
maritime survey near the disputed Liancourt Rocks (reftel).
He explained, briefly, that the ROK intended to propose to an
international commission in June that features on the bottom
of the sea in the disputed area be given Korean names. Japan
wants to survey the area in order to make a counter-proposal
at the meeting. Korea, Yachi stated, may use force to block
the survey ship. Yachi further noted that he might travel to
Seoul the following day, April 21, to try to resolve the
matter peacefully.

¶2. (S) The Ambassador stated the United States understands
that Japan is within its rights under international law. The
Koreans are behaving irrationally, and the United States is
concerned that they may do something crazy, causing a major
problem. Everyone needs to back off, he stressed, to enable
the matter to be resolved peacefully. We do not want our two
allies shooting at each other, he asserted. The Ambassador
advised that he might get in touch with FM Aso later in the
day.

¶3. (C) Yachi thanked the Ambassador for his concern and
said he would do his best. He requested that the Ambassador
send an Embassy representative to the Foreign Ministry to
hear Japan's position on the issue.
SCHIEFFER

I would have liked to have been a fly on the wall during that conversation. While I think that South Korea in 2005 and 2006 did collectively need to just chill despite noise made by Tokyo over the islets long claimed by Korea and firmly in South Korea's hands for over half a century, I think Japan was out of line for trying to conduct such a survey in what are essentially territorial waters of the Republic of Korea or the EEZ that they generate. South Korea had no choice but to react with a show of force.

Korea is not "crazy" or "irrational" for being adamantly opposed to the Japanese attempt, and it's most unfortunate that the then-newbie US ambassador to Japan would editorialize as much. I seriously doubt the good Ambassador John Schieffer to Japan had any more direct knowledge or informed clue of what the South Korean side might do than anyone reading K-blogs back in 2005 and 2006.

I note that, five years later, no such "crazy" thing has happened from the Seoul side to bear that out.

...

"Great genetic influence"

It seems like such a no-brainer to the layperson, but there is still serious scholarly debate on whether the Korean and Japanese languages, as well as ethnic Korean and ethnic Japanese people, are closely related (as in one coming from the other), or if the extremely similar grammatical structure of the two languages — essentially unique — is just one big coinkydink.

Well, Sean Lee and Toshikazu Hasegama released a study using phylogenetics (stemming from evolutionary genetics) demonstrating that there was a common ancestor no more than 2200 years ago:

Some scholars argue the main settlement of the archipelago occurred 12,000 to 30,000 years ago, and that modern Japanese -- both the language and the people -- descend directly from this stone-age culture, which had some agriculture but was based mainly on hunting and gathering.

According the this theory, the migration of other peoples from mainland Asia around 200 B.C. brought metal tools, rice and new farming techniques but had scant impact on linguistic development.

Other researchers counter that this influx from the Korean Peninsula had a far deeper influence, largely replacing or displacing both the indigenous inhabitants and their spoken tongues.

Recent archaeological and DNA evidence support this theory, but researchers at The University of Tokyo wondered if additional clues might be found by tracing dozens of distinct dialects back through time to their earliest common ancestor.

Lee and Hasegama fall into the latter camp. Their research methodology is interesting:

"Accumulating empirical evidence suggests that languages have, astonishingly, gene-like properties, and they also evolve by a process of descent," he said.

Lee and Hasegama created a list of 210 key vocabulary words -- body parts, basic verbs, numbers and pronouns -- and duplicated that list across 59 different dialects.

The researchers chose words unlikely to be borrowed across dialects and "resistant to change," much in the same way biologists seek out so-called "highly-conserved" genes that remain unaltered for thousands of generations.

Computer modelling showed that all of these "Japonic" languages descended from a common ancestor some 2,182 years ago -- coinciding with the major wave of migration from the Korean Peninsula.

The exact timing of the farmers' arrival may go back a little further, Lee said by email, but the core conclusion seems inescapable: "the first farmers of Japan had a profound impact on the origins of both people and languages."

This kind of thing is controversial, but it's not as if the possibility that modern Japanese are mostly descendants of several waves of Korean migrants is ignored in Japan. In fact, back in the 1990s, I recall visiting a national museum in Tokyo's Ueno Park, where a display described the non-mythical origins of the Japanese people. It read in English, "Koreans exerted great genetic influence on Japan," a roundabout way of saying that same thing.

LAT on South Korea's renewed annoyance at Japan

I've already covered it in this post, but John Glionna of the Los Angeles Times brings it to a larger audience than I can:

For two decades, the weekly protest has come as sure as the changing seasons: a handful of graying Korean women picketing Tokyo's embassy here, demanding an apology and compensation for being forced into sexual slavery during Japan's World War II-era occupation.

But soon after a magnitude 9 earthquake and tsunami last month killed more than 20,000 people and caused nuclear mayhem in Japan, something changed here. The so-called comfort women felt moved to hold another kind of rally: a vigil for Japanese victims.

"We hate the sin but not the people," said Lee Yong-su, 85. "We hope Japan will stand on its feet soon."

Suddenly, there was a sense that a bitter nationalistic rivalry might be replaced by something the Korean peninsula has rarely felt for its former conqueror: empathy.

South Korea was the first country to send a rescue team to the disaster area. The Korean Red Cross has raised $40 million, one of the largest nongovernment contributions to Japan after the quake. The newspaper Chosun Ilbo, which has often been critical of Japan and its policies, raised $10 million. Even the comfort women chipped in $15,000.

Many compared the moment to the brief window after the 9/11 attacks when many hoped that Democrats and Republicans might finally put aside their differences.

That, of course, didn't happen. And in the case of South Korea and Japan, the rapprochement also appears short-lived.

The two countries seem to have fallen back into old habits — like a couple in an abusive relationship where one has lorded over the other. They've gone to counseling, tried all the couples therapies. And just when one spouse is about to forgive the other, another unforgivable event comes to pass. Once again, signals are misread, and the relationship is back at a dysfunctional impasse.

I would emphasize that the South Korean view of Japan is highly dichotomized: among most SoKos, there is a mental separation between individual Japanese and the Japanese government itself. Despite Tokyo continuing to lay claim to territory they grabbed at the beginning of their brutal four-decade rule over Korea, there is still great sympathy and concern for the people of Japan who have been affected by the Tohoku earthquake, the ensuing tsunami, and the on-going nuclear crisis.

I just wish that both sides would stop doing things to poke the other in the eye, because with China rising and North Korea raving, we need to see more things like this.

Greater East Asia co-prosperity military alliance?

It seems Japan is suggesting a stronger military alliance with the US and South Korea in order to counter the growing threat from China.

From AFP:

Japan's defence minister said his country needs stronger military ties with the US and South Korea to balance China's growing might, the Wall Street Journal reported.

In an interview with the paper, Defence Minister Toshimi Kitazawa said relations with the United States were strengthened by the help its military provided in the aftermath of the March 11 earthquake and tsunami.

He said Japan was particularly concerned about China's increasing naval capabilities.

"Our priority is to make our bilateral relationship with the US rock solid," he told the paper.

"In order to maintain the right balance in our relationship with China, we need to also solidify the ties between Japan, the US and South Korea," said Kitazawa, of the centre-left Democratic Party of Japan.

This is something that has been in the works for some time already, and it's nice to see it coming to fruition.

Okay, I'm all for a very strong Tokyo-Seoul-Washington-(Taipei) alliance. So can you please stop claiming Tokto already?

Try this for a solution:

Japan officially acknowledges South Korea’s claim on Tokto while South Korea tacitly acknowledges Japan’s EEZ claim around Okinotorishima. This would tick off China, so it has to be done when Korea doesn’t care about ticking off China, or they need to tick them off as a tactical move (like in response to China rounding up North Koreans).

South Korea would, of course, maintain the 12-nautical mile territorial waters around Tokto, but it already does now anyway.

My point is that if the Tokto issue could be resolved and Japan's politicians can manage to hold their tongue on, say, Comfort Women being volunteers and Imperial Japan having been a wonderful influence on Korea, the two could be close allies, like France and Germany today.

Like a good neighbor...

Reuters has an article on some South Koreans thinking twice about their financial outpouring of support for Japan after Tokyo pushed its claim to Tokto (Takeshima in Japan) yet again:

At first, Korean pop singer Kim Jang-hoon, dubbed "the angel of donation" for his habit of donating many of his concert proceeds to the poor and campaigns to promote his country, asked his fans to put aside their decades-old animosity toward Japan over Dokdo in the wake of the 9.0 March 11 disaster that has left nearly 28,000 dead or missing.

Many ordinary South Koreans responded generously, and a dozen K-pop stars donated more than $5 million.

But the mood soon darkened after a Japanese education panel authorised the publication of school textbooks that assert Japan's claims to the islets, which act as a stark reminder of Japan's brutal colonial rule over Korea from 1910-1945.

For many, this meant all donations were off.

Yeah, I agree that Tokyo really should have just let it go, at least this once, but I think that when it comes to responses like this...

A Seoul district office that raised about $10,000 for Japanese disaster relief changed its mind and sent most of the funds to a civic group promoting Korea's claims to the islets, which are also a symbol of South Korea standing up to its neighbour.

"I asked myself, why did Japan do this at this tragic moment. We had to discuss what to do next with this fund," said Ra Tae-sung, an official at the office in southwestern Seoul.

... I'd like to point out to whatever ku office that was, that the people in Japan who are suffering and in need of help from South Korea and other countries are entirely different from the right-wing politicians who feel obliged to keep bringing up Tokyo's historically questionable and currently unenforceable claim to the Tokto Islets and the seas surrounding them.

Japan Foreign Minister Maehara forced to resign over Korean connection

Japanese Foreign Minister Seiji Maehara, who has sought a mutually helpful and enthusiastic partnership with neighboring South Korea (see here and here), has been forced to resign.

The reason? He accepted a donation from a foreign national:

At a news conference Sunday evening, Maehara apologized for causing distrust in his handling of political funds but stressed that the donations did not influence his work as foreign minister.

"The donations had no effect whatsoever on my duties as foreign minister nor have I ever done any favors for donors in my political career," Maehara said. "But regardless of the amount of the donations or the fact that I was unaware (of them), I must seriously accept the fact that a politician who was (appointed) foreign minister accepted donations from a foreigner."

Wow, that sounds serious, you might think. Except the ¥50,000 (about US$500) donation was from a friend of his he's known since junior high school, someone who runs a Korean BBQ restaurant in his 'hood. The foreign national is a South Korean citizen who is a permanent resident of Japan. Such zainichi, even if they were born in Japan, are foreigners and accepting donations from them is illegal. In fact, Mr Maehara faces a punishment of up to three years in prison.

I honestly don't know enough about these aspects of Japanese politics, but I wonder if such laws are archaic. Since the zainichi Koreans in Japan (among whom my former fiancée was one) must choose between the DPRK (North Korea) and the ROK (South Korea), perhaps Japan-born "foreigners" who are not aligned with the enemy state should be exempt, especially if Japan goes forward with laws that allow them to vote in local elections.

I imagine, though, that must be a touchy subject. After all, the zainichi are mostly able to obtain Japanese citizenship, and if they are unwilling to do so, then maybe they shouldn't be allowed to influence Japanese politics. Still, non-citizen residents, particularly lifelong residents, are strongly affected by government policy, so how do they get any say?

Anyway, I'm disappointed that someone who seemed so good for Seoul-Tokyo politics is now gone from the scene. Not only is he no longer FM, he also has no chance of being tapped to be PM.

The Thesaurus Wars: Japan and South Korea trying to figure out who Obama likes better

So South Korea is the "linchpin" and Japan is "one of the cornerstones." This has apparently freaked some people out:

US President Barack Obama is certain to heap praise on South Korea and Japan as he attends back-to-back summits but some experts see a subtle shift as he views Seoul as the more dynamic ally.

In separate remarks this year that made diplomats run to their thesauruses, Obama called South Korea "the linchpin" of regional security and Japan "one of the cornerstones" of security throughout the world.

The distinction may seem academic but it has quietly concerned some Japanese policymakers who have long viewed their country as, well, the linchpin of US strategy in Asia.

Bruce Klingner, a senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundation, said he has spoken with US officials who described Obama's "linchpin" remark -- made when he met South Korean President Lee Myung-Bak in June in Canada -- as a deliberate, if nuanced, sign of the administration's views.

Lee has been a steadfast US ally, coordinating moves in a standoff with communist North Korea. It is a striking change from Lee's liberal predecessor Roh Moo-Hyun, who openly criticized US troops and US policy toward the North.

In Japan, the center-left Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) last year ended decades of conservative rule and initially tried to win more concessions on a deal to move a controversial US air base on Okinawa island.

"Certainly under Lee Myung-Bak you have an administration that's far more forward-looking to transform the alliance into having broader responsibilities," Klingner said.

"Compare that with the DPJ government in Tokyo, which came into office downplaying the importance of the alliance and seeking a relationship that was more equidistant between Washington and Beijing," he said.

I've said this many times before: A lot of people looked at the very leftist Roh Moohyun administration and the right-wing Bush administration and saw the inevitable butting of heads as a sign the inescapable "death of the alliance." Now that there's a right-of-center president in Seoul and a pragmatically left-of-center chief in Washington, but a rare leftist in Tokyo, people are saying the same thing about Naoto Kan bringing an end to the US-Japanese partnership that they said about Roh Moohyun.

But it's nonsense. Like in Seoul, even the leftists in Tokyo know how important the US-led security umbrella is for Japan, and the good news for them — regardless of the meaning of linchpin or cornerstone — Japan will be a very welcome partner into the US-led alliance for as long as it wants to be. Indeed, if there is any rise in stature for South Korea, it is not because Japan has dropped, but simply because South Korea has been able to step up at a time when it was needed (and continues to be needed).

Being the diplomatic sort that I am, I'd like to say that both Seoul and Tokyo are linchpins in East Asia. And Tokyo and Seoul should be working together a great deal in that regard, particularly in things where Tokyo doesn't run afoul of its pacifist constitution, like protecting shipping lanes from piracy.

Besides, Japan should recognize it has something Korea never will: A town called Obama.

A World Cup of our own?

Back in the 1990s, the efforts by Japan and South Korea to host the 2002 World Cup became so feverish that FIFA took the unprecedented step of having both of them co-host the games. FIFA head Blatter lost control of the situation, and each side then tried to outdo the other with bigger and better stadiums.

The result is a legacy of nice (but largely underused) facilities that are making for a second round of feverish efforts to host the World Cup, this time in 2022. Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan wined and dined the FIFA folks who came by last week, and now we get news that South Korea's bid is also doing well:

The head of FIFA's inspection team has lauded South Korea's "well-structured" bid to host the 2022 World Cup.

Harold Mayne-Nicholls, chief of the five-man delegation, was speaking at the end of a three-day visit to the Asian nation, the second such inspection among the nine bidders for both the 2018 and 2022 World Cups. The team arrived from Japan on Thursday and land in Australia on Monday.

As well as Seoul, the team toured Daegu, Ulsan, Goyang and Incheon and also found time for dinner with president Lee Myung-Bak on Friday evening.

"Despite the short amount of time that we stayed, we could check all we needed - training sites, hotels, convention centres, stadiums, airports, new technology," said Chilean federation president Mayne-Nicholls. "We had a chance to learn a lot about the history and future of Korea and the challenges for the future, the people who have helped and the president Lee Myung-Bak, who gave all his support for the 2022 World Cup and treated us in a very friendly way.

"But mostly we learned that your well-structured bidding campaign is based on the message we all need - peace for everyone."

Wait a minute... "Peace for everyone"? Didn't that message lose us the 2014 Winter Olympics? You know, to that summer resort in Russia?

Um, anyhoo, I'd kinda like to see another joint hosting. It will be cheaper, for starters, but without about the same amount of prestige, and I'm always happy to see Seoul and Tokyo forced to get along (and they tend to, despite Yasukuni visits and reaction to Yasukuni visits, and all that other nastiness).

Barring that, of course, I'd prefer to see Korea hosting the games over Japan, especially if we're somehow looking at a unified Korea by then (it would be a huge boost to national unity at a time I imagine might be difficult for everyone). The only advantage to Japan winning the games is that I could routinely use the following picture and its caption whenever the 2022 games is mentioned.

Kaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaan!

And yes, I will be blogging in 2022. I've been to the future and seen my own posts.

Anti-Japanese sentiment affects car sales in Korea

In what is clearly a further sign of just how much Koreans loathe Japan with every fiber of their being, Lexus has overtaken BMW as the most widely purchased automobile import in Korea.

To the untrained observer, the surge in popularity of Toyota's luxury line might seem like many Korean consumers actually favor Japanese goods, but socio-cultural experts and old Korean hands can attest that the increase in sales masks a cleverly hidden and subtle form of duplicity on the part of the average Korean.

The fact is, they seek to buy Japanese cars so that they can drive them out in Seoul traffic and park them in Seoul parking lots where it is virtually guaranteed they will be scratched up. This passive aggressive form of animosity and enmity can also be seen in moviegoers who buy tickets to Japanese movies just so they can fall asleep during them, or club-goers who deliberately dance badly to J-pop (or sing really sucky karaoke).

It is reported that even those whose expensive Lexus somehow fail to be scratched up by other cars, motorcycles, and trucks edging by secretly harbor fantasies about cutting off their little pinkies while inside the vehicle and getting blood all over the high-grade leather interior.

The future of Japan-Korea relations indeed looks grim.


[photo: A somewhat older model IS 300. You, too, can do your patriotic part against Japan in President Roh Moohyun's "diplomatic war" by purchasing this overpriced monstrosity and having your infant child or drunken co-workers throw up all over the backseat.]