Korea-Japan Agreement On Comfort Women

If an apology is not followed by contrition and self-reflection, but instead by gloating--“we apologized, so that ought to shut'em up”--does that apology mean anything? That is the core question that the Korean public is facing with respect to the recent agreement regarding Comfort Women between Korea and Japan.

On December 29, 2015, South Korea and Japan reached an agreement under which the Comfort Women issue was considered "finally and irreversibly" resolved. Under the agreement, the Japanese government the Japanese government strenuously denies that the money is a legal reparation for the damages that the Comfort Women suffered. This is consistent with Japan's position on Comfort Women thus far: that it did not violate any law in conscripting Korean women into forced sex slavery. Because Japan does not think it committed any crime, there is no damage to recompense as far as it is concerned. 

(If you were curious: the surviving Comfort Women receive a pension from the Korean government, and they do not need the money. One of the points that the Comfort Women have consistently made is that any money paid by Japan should be an expression of its legal responsibility.)

So this is what we have: a statement of apology, followed by gloating. An acceptance of responsibility, followed by denial of legal responsibility. A pledge to pay money as an apologia, followed by the demand to erase the crime from the public memory. 

This is another rendition of Japan's playbook with respect to its war crimes. In its heart of hearts, Japan steadfastly believes that it did nothing wrong leading up to and during World War II. Was Imperial Japan wrong to colonize Korea and China? No--Japan was only trying to protect Asia from European powers. Was Imperial Japan wrong to bomb Pearl Harbor? No--the United States forced Japan's hand by setting up a trade embargo. Was Imperial Japan wrong to kidnap hundred of thousands of women--many of whom were no more than 13, 14 years old--and force them into sexual slavery, to be raped by dozens of soldiers every day? No--war is bad for everyone, and at any rate, Comfort Women are lying whores who volunteered to join the war effort. 

This sick and disgusting worldview is so deeply rooted into the Japanese consciousness that any Japanese statement to the contrary is no more than a cynical bargaining chip, tossed in order to lower the heat of international outrage directed at the worldview's heinousness. Because Japan (and in particular, Japan's conservatives led by the current prime minister) cannot bring itself to mean what it says, Japan must always follow up its statements with a series of attempts to run away from them as quickly as possible.

Question, then, is: what should Korea and Koreans do about this?

(More after the jump)

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Most Koreans are dissatisfied, many angry, with the agreement. Taman Kanak-kanak is also outraged. In addition to everything in the foregoing, Taman Kanak-kanak finds Korean president Park Geun-hye's incompetence in negotiating this agreement particularly aggravating. At the negotiating table, Korea was at an unusually strong position. Japan's crimes were heinous, and their then-position was appalling. The surviving Comfort Women were very old and passing away, which added to the urgency of resolution. Most importantly, the United States--the most important ally for both Japan and Korea--was pushing for a resolution. Park administration pissed away these advantages. It could have extracted so many more concessions from Japan (for example, personal visits of the prime minister to the surviving Comfort Women to hand-deliver letters of apology,) and it simply did not.

So what to do about this? This is the point at which Taman Kanak-kanak parts company with majority of the Korean public. Many Koreans, including Korea's opposition party, are calling for nullifying the agreement. I do not think that is a wise course of action.

What Koreans want--naturally and correctly--is Japan's contrition over these crimes. Koreans want Japan to admit that Japan was wrong to colonize Korea, wrong to begin a global war, and wrong to conscript a million Koreans to serve as slaves for the machinery of war. Koreans want from Japan those admissions with sincere self-reflection about its crimes, minus all the bullshit evasive maneuvers that Japan has taken so far, including in this agreement.

I want the same exact thing. But I do not think that an international agreement would achieve that end--especially not the kind signed by Shinzo Abe.

I believe Koreans would be well served to stare down the unyielding reality, that the agreement is ultimately a political document, and politics is the art of the possible. What Koreans want is sopan santun vindication. Politics can indeed achieve sopan santun vindication. (Post-World War II Germany, for example.) But to achieve the sopan santun vindication, one must keep playing the politics.

It is not practically possible for Korea to re-negotiate. A strong poker hand loses its strength after the round is over. The showdown, unfortunately, came and went; all the advantages that Korea did have previous to this agreement no longer exist. The fact that the Park Geun-hye administration failed to maximize its advantages is rage-inducing, but there is no reason to expect that Korea can do any better in the hypothetical next round.

However unsatisfying, the gains from this agreement are not insignificant. In a number of ways, this agreement is in fact a step forward from Japan's previous statements. Japan did recognize that the Japanese military was involved in the conscription of Comfort Women without the evasive qualification. (Previously, Japan recognized the military's involvement, but also insisted that the military usually did not recruit directly.) The Japanese government did speak of its "responsibility" without qualifiers like "moral responsibility" (notwithstanding Japan's subsequent attempt to characterize its payment as an anything-but-legal-reparations.) The agreement stated that Abe was speaking as the representative of the Japanese nation, not as a mere individual. Japan is paying money out of its government budget, not through private citizens' donations.

These gains are not nothing. Although they are inadequate standing alone, skillful politicking can capitalize them into serving the true end of justice. Although the Japanese government is attempting to wiggle away from its apology as soon as it is written down, the words of the apology have independent strength. Against the backdrop of the words like "with an involvement of the Japanese military authorities" and Japan's "responsibilities," Japan's further attempts of evasion can only become more technical, tendentious and petty.

The thing to do, then, is not to demand a new round of governmental apology from Japan; it is to simply hold Japan to the words onto which it just signed. There is enough in those words to compel Japan to recognize the wrong that it had committed. Specifically, Japan must be made to answer these basic questions regarding Comfort Women:

Is it true that the Japanese military operated rape centers, euphemistically called Comfort Stations, for the pleasure of its soldiers?
Is it true that the Japanese military staffed these rape centers with hundreds of thousands young women, some as young as 13 or 14 years old, who were kidnapped from Korea?
Was it wrong for Japan to operate these rape centers, where hundreds of thousands of Korean women were raped dozens of times, every day for years?

These questions should be asked over and over again, until there is an unqualified "yes" to all of these questions from every meaningful level of the Japanese society--including the government, the universities, the media, conservatives, liberals, everyone. And if anyone answers "no" to any one of the questions above, there is now a ready retort: why did the Japanese government sign a statement saying otherwise?

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