(EDITORIAL from the Korea Herald on Dec. 16)

Friendly sentiment

Sixty-three percent of Japanese people responding to an official survey on their
attitudes toward foreign countries said they feel "friendly" about (South) Korea.

It was by far the highest rate of positive attitude toward Korea since the
Japanese Office of the Cabinet started the survey in 1978. On overall relations
between the two neighboring countries, 66.5 percent of the Japanese respondents
assessed them as satisfactory. It was a 17-percentage-point rise from last year's
figure.
The survey results provided an excellent background for the visit to Seoul by the
Japanese ruling party strongman, Ichiro Ozawa, who performed a wonderful
publicity feat with an unofficial apology to the Korean people over the two
countries' history during a lecture at a university and a "baduk" ("go") game
with the nation's top grandmaster. During his dinner meeting with President Lee
Myung-bak, the secretary general of the Democratic Party of Japan expressed hope
that the two countries could make a fresh start without being bound by the past.
"A new start" in ties with Japan is often mentioned here these days as the time
is approaching the inglorious centennial of the 1910 Japanese forceful annexation
of Korea. Many commemorative events are being prepared, as the year also
coincides with the 60th anniversary of the outbreak of the Korean War and 50
years from the April 19, 1960, Student Revolution.
The presidential Investigative Commission on Pro-Japanese Collaborators'
Properties is about to wrap up its four-year-long activities with the seizure of
nearly 100 billion won worth of real estate from the descendants of "traitors"
who helped the Japanese colonialists. The government will use the funds from the
sale of these properties in programs to commemorate the exploits of independence
fighters and support their families.
Many here and in Japan contemplate that a visit to Korea by Japanese Emperor
Akihito during 2010 could historically close an unhappy chapter in the relations
between the two neighboring countries with a proper pronouncement of an apology
from him. Successive Korean presidents have extended verbal invitations but the
Japanese Cabinet has yet to positively consider the monarch's visit to Korea.
Ozawa said in Seoul that "it may be possible if the Korean people welcome (the
emperor)."
At the turn of the year, research institutes and polltakers in cooperation with
media outlets will conduct surveys on public sentiments across the Korea Strait a
full century after colonization and 65 years after liberation, particularly on
Korean people's reaction to a possible visit here by the Emperor Akihito.
Affirmative replies will account for a much higher percentage than a few years
ago, considering the relative calm on the diplomatic front since the inception of
the Hatoyama government in Tokyo and the ever-expanding private exchanges.
It offers good homework for political scientists that a rightist administration
in Korea and a left-of-center government in Japan can foster warmer relations
than the progressive-conservative combination that had existed across the East
Sea over the past several years. But one can easily conclude that Prime Minister
Hatoyama's instruction to his Cabinet members to refrain from visiting the
Yasukuni Shrine has a greater effect than his diplomatic policy emphasizing
stronger ties with the rest of Asia, as far as Korean sentiments are concerned.
There are quite a few more landmines strewn between the two countries. The Dok-do
issue alone has enough explosive power to shatter the carefully-built amity.
Great caution by governments will, however, make the centennial a year for a real
fresh start rather than a reminder of the hated past, now that friendly feeling
is definitely on the rise at the public level.
(END)

Delete & Prev | Delete & Next