Japan - A whole lot more than raw fish!

Japundit

March 15th, 2005 at 12:01 am

When will they ever learn?

» by Ampontan in: Conflict, Japan, North Korea, Politics, South Korea, WW-II

Recalling his experiences at Harvard, Henry Kissinger remarked that academic politics were so vicious because there is so little at stake. He could just as well have been speaking of current Japanese-South Korean relations. Someone should tell South Korean Foreign Minister Ban Ki Moon, who last week blustered that Seoul was willing to risk its ties with Japan over the dispute involving the Takeshima (Japanese name) / Dokdo (Korean name) islets in the Sea of Japan (world name) / East Sea (Korean name).

Anti-Japanese sentiment in South Korea (world name) / South Corea (Korean name) has flared again because the Shimane Prefecture Assembly in Japan is set to designate February 22 as Takeshima Day this week. The Japanese government claims that the islets have been part of Shimane Prefecture since 1905. The prefecture has taken several steps this year to mark the 100th anniversary of their “administration” of the islets, though South Korea handles that chore now.

Japanese ambassador to South Korea Toshiyuki Takano also stated that Takeshima/Dokdo “historically and legally are part of Japan’s territory.” These comments, combined with Shimane’s actions, have rubbed the Koreans raw. Several Korean National Assembly members want Takano sent back to Japan.

Disputed islands The two islets at issue are an estimated 230,967 square meters, approximately five times the size of the Tokyo Dome, a baseball stadium and concert venue in Japan. In contrast, Central Park in New York City occupies more than 3 million square meters of land. The islets are uninhabited and of interest to the two countries only because they would extend their fishing rights—and give politicians a chance to pound the pulpit.

Foreign Minister Ban unloaded after Seoul scrambled four fighter jets to intercept a business jet sent by the Asahi Shimbun in Japan to take photographs of the islands (despite the excellent photos of the islands that already exist.) The foreign minister also suggested that “Some Japanese politicians and officials should refrain from making inappropriate remarks that could provoke or hurt the minds of Koreans.”

But Ban need not have spoken. Recent events already show that South Korea was willing to risk its ties with Japan. For example:

Ban recently postponed a scheduled trip to Japan because of the dispute. He had planned to discuss methods of dealing with North Korea and its nuclear weapons capabilities, as well as developing friendly ties between the two countries. 2005 has been designated as a year of Japanese-Korean friendship, with many events planned to commemorate the 40 years since the normalization of diplomatic relations. But Takeshima/Dokdo was more important than Pyongyang’s weapons because, in Ban’s words, the issue could inflame Korean passions. Here’s a link to a Japanese article.

A group from Japan’s ruling Liberal-Democratic Party cancelled a three-day visit to South Korea to discuss possible economic sanctions against North Korea. The leader of the group said that an environment did not exist for the calm exchange of opinions with the South Korean government and the ruling Uri Party. Here’s a link to a Japanese article.

The city of Matsue in Shimane Prefecture was to send a soccer team to Jinju in South Korea for a friendly match as part of a friendship agreement between the two cities. The 19 members of the amateur soccer team were to have spent four days in South Korea. That game and trip have been cancelled at Jinju’s request, however, which noted that media coverage of the islet issue had the potential to create problems. Here’s a link to a Japanese article.

Korean National Assembly member Lee Mi Kyung of the Uri Party revealed that the Assembly might cancel some of the governmental-level events scheduled for the Japan-Korea Friendship Year. Remarked Lee, the chair of the Assembly’s Culture and Tourism Committee, “There’s no need for a friendship year when an ambassador representing a country that distorts history and claims another nation’s territory makes thoughtless remarks.”

There also were calls by some assembly members to change the name of the East Sea (Korean name) to its “original name” of the Sea of Corea (goofball name). Here’s a full account in English in the Korean Times.

See Coreans More disturbing to me than the article’s content is the accompanying photo. It reveals the South Koreans showing their shared bloodlines with their cousins to the North by dressing up children in costumes, sticking flags in their hands, and trotting them out for propaganda photos. Note the “Sea of Corea” banner in English at the top of the photo.

You just knew that Pyongyang was going to find a way to put in their two cents (probably counterfeit), and by jingo, they found one. Continuing their impersonation of The Marx Brothers doing a film version of George Orwell’s 1984, the North Korean government used the daily newspaper Minju Choson to assert that Takeshima/Dokdo was Korean territory and that the only reason the Japanese claimed sovereignty was to “launch another invasion of our country”. The paper also said the government would “ruthlessly and sternly punish those who violated the nation’s dignity and sovereignty.” Here’s the article in Japanese.

Friends? Frankly, I don’t care whom the islets belong to. Korean behavior is counterproductive, but some people are not happy unless they’re not happy (particularly with the Japanese). For their part, the Japanese have been just as clueless by pushing a trivial issue in Shimane and sending a diplomat to Seoul who doesn’t know when to diplomatically smile and keep his mouth shut, despite being well aware of the Korean taste for brinkmanship. If Japan and South Korea were adolescent boys (instead of behaving like bad imitations) I would grab both of the knuckleheads by their shirt collars, sit them down, and explain some of the facts of political and economic life in the West to them.

First, I would point out that while the Japanese colonized Korea for 35 years, Great Britain colonized the United States for more than 150 years, until the United States fought for and won its independence. I also would point out that just 30 years later, the two countries fought another war, during which the British sacked Washington D.C. and burnt the White House. (The White House was painted white to hide the burn marks on the walls, which still exist.) They also invaded Baltimore while their naval vessels bombarded the city, inspiring Francis Scott Key to write The Star Spangled Banner.

In other words, every day in the United States people sing a song about the British attacking their country. Yet far from harboring malice toward each other, today the U.S. and Great Britain are each other’s closest ally.

I would then explain that despite close, long-standing cultural ties, friction is a constant in the relationship between the U.S. and Europe. In addition to their well-known diplomatic differences, they are involved in endless trade disputes. For example, the EU banned hormone-feed beef exports from the U.S. and refused to end it even though the WTO ruled there was “no scientific evidence” to support it. In turn, the U.S. retaliated with duties on EU goods, including mustard and cheese. The EU then filed a complaint with the WTO against these duties.

The U.S. complains about EU farm subsidies and food product standards, and the EU objects to U.S. restrictions on trade and investment. There have been rows over bananas, steel, and U.S. corporate tax breaks to exporters. In March 2004 the EU started raising its tariffs on some U.S. goods. The EU apparently wants to link the lifting of EU sanctions to the end of U.S. subsidies to Boeing, started after the U.S. complained of EU subsidies to Airbus.

I would conclude by telling the two boys that the EU and the U.S. are each other’s largest single trading partner in goods and services and each other’s most important source and destination for direct foreign investment. They account for about 21% of each other’s trade in goods and 35.3% per cent of each other’s trade in services. They invest more in each other’s economies than they do in any other area of the world.

Peace! Daniel Hamilton has called the US-EU relationship a “$2.5 trillion transatlantic economy . . . [that] employs 12 million workers on both sides of the Atlantic who enjoy high wages, high labor and environmental standards, and open, largely non-discriminatory access to each other’s markets”.

In short, despite ongoing problems, the U.S. and the EU are making each other wealthy. They are in a win-win situation and they are not about to kill the goose that lays the golden egg over a bunch of bananas. Now if the two numbskulls in East Asia could only figure that out.