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The government on Thursday announced a new doctrine for its dealings with Japan in which seeking an apology and compensation from the former colonial power for its wartime atrocities take center stage. The doctrine announced in a National Security Council meeting responds to recent Japanese moves Seoul calls "a second dispossession of the Korean Peninsula that denies the history of Korea's liberation."
National Security Council Chairman and Unification Minister Chung Dong-young told a press conference the government viewed Japan's behavior over the Dokdo Islets and history distortions in Japanese textbooks as no different from Japan's colonial seizing of the peninsula, and would respond strongly.
He said Japanese claims of sovereignty over Korean territory, "which was forcefully stripped from Korea by the Japanese imperialists and restored by liberation, is not simply a territorial dispute but a denial of the history of Korea's liberation."
The government will focus its Japan policy on urging Tokyo to get to the bottom of its imperial past, sincerely apologize and reflect on its wrongdoings. By saying it will specifically seek compensation for wartime abuses "outside of the existing 1965 Korea-Japan Treaty," the government hinted at room for an additional bilateral agreement. Vice Foreign Minister Lee Tae-shik called on Seoul and Tokyo to work together to resolve issues left out of the 1965 treaty for which Japan bore moral responsibility, like conscription of "comfort women" into sexual slavery and dragging of Koreans to Sakhalin Island and Hiroshima, where they fell victim to the atomic bombing.
The government says the first step in Tokyo's bid to become a permanent member of the U.N. Security Council was earning the trust of its neighbors - a thinly veiled threat that it will oppose Japan's inclusion on the council unless it sees some Japanese soul-searching.
Seoul's new hard-line doctrine may have landed the relationship between the two countries in a rut. A government official said failing a genuine response from Tokyo, Seoul was in no position to take part in summits or endorse cooperative projects between the two countries. He said depending on the results of the screening of a controversial history textbook by the Japanese Ministry of Education in April, bilateral ties could enter an "ice age."
The government is bracing itself for the economic and diplomatic pain a deterioration of relations with Japan is bound to entail. Chung called Thursday's announcement a "turning point in relations with Japan", and said, "Even if there are difficulties, we need to be prepared to endure what needs to be endured for the right development of history and the great cause of the nation."
(englishnews@chosun.com )
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