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  • New Korea, Japan Leaders Signal Soft Line

    So far, all three leaderships are busy shoring up their new found positions.... well see if the good will last.





    By EVAN RAMSTAD in Seoul, CHESTER DAWSON in Tokyo and BRIAN SPEGELE in Beijing

    New leaders in South Korea and Japan on Thursday both said they would seek co-operation to improve recently strained ties, although their statements appeared aimed for the moment at shoring up domestic support and indicated tensions remain.

    The election on Wednesday of Park Geun-hye as South Korea's next president and on Sunday of Shinzo Abe as Japan's next prime minister rounded out leadership changes atop the three powers in northeast Asia. Last month, China started a once-a-decade power transition with the selection of Xi Jinping as Communist Party general secretary and successor to former party chief Hu Jintao.

    New Korea, Japan Leaders Signal Soft Line - WSJ.com

    Final touches of President-elect Park Geun-hye, right, and President Lee Myung-bak are painted in Seoul Thursday.

    Diplomatic tensions between the three countries flared in recent months over historical and territorial issues, ranging from the possession of islands to fishing rights to recognition of wartime behaviors.

    Even so, all three countries have a stake in keeping stable ties, largely owing to their extensive trade and economic connections and the common security challenge they face in the form of neighbor North Korea's pursuit of nuclear weapons.

    For its part, North Korea's official state media has said nothing yet about the elections of Mr. Abe and Ms. Park, both conservatives who are wary of Pyongyang's history of broken diplomatic promises. North Korea has praised the power transition in China, the country that is its main political ally and economic benefactor.

    On Thursday morning, Mr. Abe issued a statement welcoming the election of Ms. Park and noting that Japan and South Korea "shared values and strategic interests."

    He added he would coordinate closely with South Korea to safeguard regional security and solidify ties. "I seek to facilitate a close mutual understanding with President-elect Park to, in a variety of ways, further deepen Japan-South Korean relations," Mr. Abe said.

    Ms. Park, who is South Korea's first female leader, touched on regional geopolitics in a speech Thursday morning, the day after her election, though she didn't refer to Mr. Abe's remarks directly.

    "I will try to expand reconciliation, cooperation and peace in Northeast Asia based on correct recognition of history," she said, making a reference to a widely held view in South Korea that Japan should make a fresh formal apology for actions during its colonization of the Korean peninsula a century ago, including the use of sex slaves by its military.

    "She has stressed the importance of the Korean-Japanese relationship from virtually all angles but at the same time, she has also emphasized the importance of a correct understanding of history in Japan to take the relationship to the next level," said Lee Chung-min, a professor at Yonsei University in Seoul and foreign-policy advisor to Ms. Park's campaign.

    "She looks forward to a constructive, future-oriented relationship with the incoming Abe government in Japan."

    Thursday afternoon, Ms. Park held private meetings with the ambassadors of the U.S., Japan and China to South Korea.

    Mr. Abe has a long history of hard-edged comments toward China and South Korea over territorial claims and the revisiting of history. In recent months, when tensions flared between Japan and China over possession of islands known as Senkaku in Japan and Diaoyu in China, Mr. Abe harshly criticized the then-Tokyo government for not doing enough to defend them.

    Even so, when he first served as prime minister in 2006, Mr. Abe had made similarly hawkish remarks about China and then acted quickly to soothe ties with a surprise visit to Beijing, as well as to Seoul.

    Mr. Abe is now more likely to act pragmatically with South Korea than China, said Susumu Kohari, a professor of international relations at the University of Shizuoka. "But if he feels provoked by Seoul, then he'll be tempted to set his administration apart from his predecessor's and that could spark a wider conflagration," he said.

    One potential flash point comes on Feb. 22, three days before Ms. Park's inauguration. That's the date Japan's southwestern Shimane prefecture celebrates its so-called Takeshima Day, a holiday affirming Japan's claim of the Liancourt Rocks, which South Korea controls and calls Dokdo. Finger-pointing on both sides may cast a pall on the broader relationship.

    In Beijing, the focus of China's new leadership has turned largely inward in the month since Mr. Xi took control. The handover of the party reins took place in a year that saw the fall of former Communist Party star Bo Xilai—exposing tensions and ideological divides usually hidden from the public—as well as worries about a slowing economy and rampant corruption.

    Mr. Xi has made only scant mention of foreign policy during his first weeks in office, and his views on China's role in the world remains a looming question mark for diplomats and observers.

    Still, he has moved to demonstrate China's growing military heft. During a trip to the southern province of Guangdong this month, Mr. Xi's first official visit as party chief, he met military leaders and was shown in state media aboard the destroyer Haikou, part of the South China Sea fleet. In addition to simmering disputes with Japan, China faces territorial tensions with neighbors in the South China Sea including U.S. partners Vietnam and the Philippines.
    —Min Sun Lee in Seoul and Yuka Hayashi in Tokyo contributed to this article.

    Write to Evan Ramstad at [email protected], Chester Dawson at [email protected] and Brian Spegele at [email protected]
    “the misery of being exploited by capitalists is nothing compared to the misery of not being exploited at all” -- Joan Robinson

  • #2
    Japan-South Korea tensions complicate the picture for US
    TODAYonline | World | Japan-South Korea tensions complicate the picture for US


    Washington relieved at poll wins for Abe, Park, but conservatives in power may deepen neighbours' enmity
    04:45 AM Dec 22, 2012
    SEOUL - The sighs of relief in Washington have almost been audible.

    As the United States forges ahead with efforts to counter China's influence in Asia, Japan and South Korea this week both elected conservative, pro-American leaders, raising hopes that the US and its two closest Asian allies can work together on the vexing security issues roiling this economically vibrant region.

    All those issues, that is, except one: Tokyo and Seoul's emotionally charged relations with each other.

    "The US might think it's great to have two conservative governments, but these are two allies that cannot even sign a minor agreement," said Mr Daniel Sneider, a researcher on East Asian diplomacy at Stanford University.

    The neighbours - which host about 75,000 American troops and sailors - remain hamstrung by history, and even a relatively small deal on intelligence sharing unravelled earlier this year amid a dispute over how to view Japan's harsh colonisation of the Korean Peninsula before World War II.



    The preferred candidates



    Even with those worries, the elections were seen as a victory for Washington as it struggles to contain a nuclear-armed North Korea and counter China's military build-up. In both elections, the winners defeated opponents who raised at least some alarms in Washington.

    In Japan, a blowout victory by the Liberal Democrats last Sunday ensured that the prime ministership will go to Mr Shinzo Abe, a nationalist who has vowed to restore close military cooperation with the US that frayed under a left-leaning government during a dispute over an American base.

    One of the losers was a party led by Mr Shintaro Ishihara, known for railing against his nation's servility to Washington and for provoking a territorial spat with China that the US fears being dragged into.

    In South Korea, Ms Park Geun Hye won on Wednesday with promises to keep the close bonds that the incumbent, Mr Lee Myung Bak, cultivated with the Obama administration, a relationship that analysts in both countries say is the best ever by leaders of the two nations.

    Ms Park defeated a liberal candidate who wanted an immediate restart of extensive aid to North Korea that some feared would undermine US-led sanctions against the North's nuclear programme.

    The Obama administration quickly embraced both victors. After a phone call with Mr Obama, Mr Abe announced that he would go to Washington next month for his first visit abroad as Prime Minister, and Ms Park's aides said her first presidential visit abroad would also most probably be to the US.



    A positive signal from Abe



    There had been hopes that tensions might ease after Mr Lee leaves office, but one side effect of installing two conservative governments might be to ensure that neither side is willing to give in on issues closely bound to national identity and pride, like the continuing fracas over Korean women forced into sexual slavery by Japan during World War II.

    "South Korean-Japan ties are already in trouble, and there is probably only more trouble ahead with Abe and Park," said Mr Hwang Ji Hwan, a professor of international relations at the University of Seoul.

    The last time he was Prime Minister, from 2006 to 2007, Mr Abe drew criticism in Seoul and in the US Congress for denying the position of the South Korean government and most historians that Korean "comfort women" were coerced, saying they instead were common prostitutes.

    Ms Park, a lawmaker at the time, went to Washington to attend congressional hearings that criticised Mr Abe's denials.

    During the presidential campaign, she shed her usual quiet reserve when she appeared to lecture a reporter for a conservative Japanese newspaper, who asked about the worsening of Japanese-Korean relations.

    "There is something that I really want to tell you ... (the sex slave issue) cannot be justified in any way whatsoever," she said. "I hope the wise leaders of Japan will deeply ponder this point."

    Officials for all three nations say some efforts to soothe relations are already under way. Japanese and American officials said that last month, the US Assistant Secretary of State for Asian affairs, Mr Kurt Campbell, privately urged Mr Abe to shelve calls to revise a 1993 official apology to the women by Japan's government.

    Yesterday, Mr Abe announced that he would send a special envoy to Seoul to mend ties. The decision appears to signal that Mr Abe got the message that improving ties is necessary.

    "Both sides have learned there is a line that you don't want to cross," said Mr Lee Chung Min, an adviser on international affairs to Ms Park. The New York Times
    “the misery of being exploited by capitalists is nothing compared to the misery of not being exploited at all” -- Joan Robinson

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