Moon needs strategic response to deal with Japan row
Posted : 2019-07-26 20:34
Updated : 2019-07-27 15:17
Protesters with an image of Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, bottom, stage a rally denouncing the Japanese government's decision on their exports to South Korea in front of the Japanese Embassy in Seoul, July 24. Colonial-era Korean forced laborers recently launched a legal step to get court approval for the sale of local assets of their former Japanese employer Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, which has refused to compensate the former workers. AP-Yonhap
By Do Je-hae
Almost a month has passed since Japan announced tightened export controls on some high-tech materials used in Korean manufacturers' chips and display panels.
Cheong Was Dae's handling of the escalating trade row, which President Moon Jae-in has defined as a national emergency, has been mixed. As seen in Moon's improved job approval ratings, many Koreans are giving a positive assessment of the South Korean leader's hardline stance on Japan. In the third week of July, Moon's ratings hit 51.8 percent, the highest in eight months.
Moon's public messages against Japan have become sterner in the past few weeks. Cheong Wa Dae took a harsher tone particularly after some high-level Japanese officials raised suspicions of some strategic materials being diverted to North Korea by Seoul in violation of international sanctions against Pyongyang. But the presidential office has also been criticized for fanning anti-Japanese sentiment by resorting to an overly emotional approach. Such an approach has made it more difficult for the two countries to launch diplomatic efforts, according to experts.
"President Moon has backed himself and his country into a corner in this dispute. He is appealing to his domestic base, riding public sentiment, which is very anti-Japanese, and ignoring the country's long-term strategic interests," said Brad Glosserman, senior adviser of the Pacific Forum CSIS.
"Anyone who thinks differently from Cheong Wa Dae is labeled pro-Japanese. The government lacks a diplomatic solution and has no strategy to win over Japan," main opposition Liberty Korea Party (LKP) Chairman Hwang Kyo-ahn said during a party meeting earlier this month.
Here is a close look at some of the major faults with Cheong Wa Dae's reaction to the intensifying Korea-Japan dispute that stand in the way of a diplomatic breakthrough.
Ignoring past agreements
The trade row was started by Tokyo's announcement of new export controls on July 4, but experts suggest that the current feud is the result of bilateral tension that has been piling up for some time. After his election victory on July 21, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said in a press conference that the current situation in the two countries' relations were due to breach of trust, and accused the Seoul government of violating the 1965 treaty agreement. The Japanese leader has repeatedly claimed that Korea has broken promises with Japan, including the 2015 deal on the comfort women.
"It is going a bit far to say that South Korea could not be trusted but Abe, along with his advisers and most observers, believe that Moon is putting domestic politics above the national interest and that Moon shows little respect for international law and diplomatic precedent," Glosserman said.
Another reason for the lack of trust is that Seoul has shown discrepancies in dealing with the wartime labor issue. The previous Roh Moo-hyun administration gave money to support the victims through a special law, which is seen by many experts as the Korean government's decision to deal with their grievances regarding their wartime trials domestically, recognizing that the wartime labor issue was settled with Japan through the 1965 treaty.
The mounting distrust between the two countries has kept the two countries from summit diplomacy. Some experts suggest that Seoul needs to show its position more clearly on the 1965 treaty.
"The real reason that Tokyo does not trust Seoul is that it thinks Korea has been somewhat dismissive of the basic treaty that the two countries have abided by for more than 50 years," Chung Jae-jeong, a professor emeritus at the University of Seoul, wrote in a recent column. "Declaring that Seoul will respect the treaty can assuage Tokyo's distrust and then, the two countries can settle urgent issues through diplomatic negotiations."
Too emotional
Cheong Wa Dae has also been openly critical of media reports and columns translated into Japanese and carried on Japanese portals from some conservative media that were critical of the Moon administration's response to the trade row. There are rising concerns that such an emotional reaction from Cheong Wa Dae is not helpful in resolving the issue diplomatically.
The bilateral tension reached a new level after Korea refused to accept Japan's request for a third-party arbitration panel to review the ruling by July 18, the deadline set by the Japanese foreign ministry for Seoul to reply to the request.
"The government should state more clearly why it rejects the arbitration. At the same time, Tokyo could be more flexible on firms' settlement options and clarify the reasons it imposed export restrictions," said Celeste Arrington, professor of George Washington Elliott School of International Affairs.
Moon has emphasized the victims and the people's consent, rather than international law and bilateral treaties, were the most important consideration in further negotiations with Japan regarding the reparations for the wartime forced labor. "Our principle is that we place priority on the victims and the people. This principle will remain unchanged in the future," a presidential aide said on July 22 during a regular briefing at Cheong Wa Dae. "Japanese observers would say that President Moon does seem to be bowing to public sentiment," said Arrington, adding that such perceptions "inhibit the kind of hard and sustained dialogue needed to resolve the current impasse."
Unrealistic countermeasures
Cheong Wa Dae has shown a lack of strategy not just diplomatically but also economically in dealing with the export curbs which are feared to hit Korea's key industries and hamper the global supply chain of high-tech products.
During a Cabinet meeting, Moon warned Japan will also suffer from the trade restrictions, but the President's threat on Japan was not very convincing when considering that Japan's economic fundamentals are much stronger that those of Korea, in addition to boasting an overwhelming supremacy over Korea in the high-tech sector.
Moon has repeatedly called on local firms to band together to develop the parts and materials industries. He said that the trade row should be seen as an "opportunity" to raise the global competitiveness of our high-tech sector. But the development of parts and materials industries has been a policy objective for more than 20 years without much progress being made. In his public messages, he emphasized a "can-do" spirit but was vague about how to overcome the impact of the trade row.
Experts are stressing long-term strategies for Korea to thrive with new technologies.
"Korean firms are highly competitive in the manufacturing of high tech products. However, as the world moves toward the introduction of 5G and the artificial intelligence applications it will help to make possible, Korea's weakness is in the software that will power many of those innovations," said Troy Stangarone, a senior director of congressional affairs and trade at the Korea Economic Institute. "While the focus on semiconductor diversification and new fields such as hydrogen power are important, there needs to be a greater emphasis on developing the types of software applications that will thrive on 5G systems."
"In the mid and long-term, we need to invest in nurturing basic science for advancing the parts and materials industries," former Finance Minister Yoon Jeung-hyun said during a recent forum on economic countermeasures to Japan's trade restrictions.
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