Korea-Japan Friendship Year'
It's Time to Move From Hostility to Co-prosperity
Anniversaries are the aids of remembrance for forgetful humans. For Koreans, 2005 comes as an unforgettable year with three big anniversaries related with Japan: Korea was virtually annexed by Japan 100 years ago, liberated from colonization 60 years ago and normalized relationship with its former ruler 40 years ago.
The two countries have set 2005 as the ``Year of Korea-Japan (or Japan-Korea) Friendship,’’ but their focuses and interpretations of the three events still seem quite different. This means Seoul and Tokyo have a long way to go for making this the first year of true reconciliation and a joint march toward common prosperity.
Few can deny the Korea-Japan relationship is now better than ever. The number of travelers visiting each other country, which totaled 10,000 a year in 1965, now tops 10,000 a day. Seoul and Tokyo are third largest trade partner to each other, following the United States and China. Korean entertainers steal the year-end show at Japan’s largest TV station, and the top leaders joke and smile as if they were longtime buddies.
On the flip side, Japan still is not lowering its visa barriers for Korean travelers except for limited cases. Korea’s huge trade deficit with Japan more than eclipses the country’s surplus from trade with China. The ``Korean wave’’ led by some pop idols could prove to be short-lived as other foreign culture booms in Tokyo. President Roh Moo-hyun and Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi show sharp differences on key issues.
Their Janus-faced relationship will likely undergo a grave test this year. In Korea, efforts to rectify historical wrongs will start in earnest by ferreting out collaborators for the Japanese colonialists and declassifying the records behind diplomatic normalization. Japan’s march toward an ``ordinary’’ country will also accelerate, politically and militarily, accompanied by periodic denials of its past misdeeds by some politicians. Koizumi himself will visit the Yasukuni Shrine sometime this year, if not in January, to pay homage to Japan’s fallen soldiers, including a dozen of class-A World War II criminals.
From the viewpoint of many Koreans, Japan is still not a trustworthy neighbor as it has yet to truly repent its past and take appropriate measures of self-reflection. For not a few Japanese, however, Korea may be a tiresome complainant wanting to live in the past. We think the two countries need to see each other as they are instead of as they wish to be.
The first step toward this direction is for the two peoples to know each other much better than now, and this is why the current Korean culture boom in Japan should continue and develop further.