For years, American diplomats and military leaders have been asking the South Koreans and the Japanese: “Can’t we all just get along?”
Common Interests, but Still Antagonists
Logic suggests Japan and the Republic of Korea (ROK) should cooperate well.Emotion—sometimes stoked by outside actors with their own agendas—ensures that they don’t.
Leaving aside the threat from China, South Korea and Japan face common and immediate threats from North Korea. The ROK faces a serious conventional and nuclear threat, and Seoul is within artillery range of North Korean batteries. Meanwhile, as Pyongyang repeatedly reminds Tokyo, Japan is well within North Korean missile range. South Korea and Japan also have intertwined economies, and considerable familial and cultural connections.
Yet, the Japan-South Korea relationship resembles the difficult relationship between the Irish and the English. Resentments die hard owing to the often cruel experience of the English colonization of Ireland centuries ago, lasting until the early 20th century.
In South Korea’s case, the historical touchstone period is 1910–1945, when Japan colonized the Korean peninsula, though Koreans claim Japanese torment of Korea goes back much farther.
South Korea and Japan aren’t the only countries with deep-rooted “issues.” But both are key U.S. allies—covered by treaty obligations—in a part of the world where the United States has deep interests and faces dangerous threats.
Besides the North Korean threat, the United States is also squaring off with China. Indeed, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) is looking to dominate the Asia-Pacific and drive the United States off the peninsula and out of the region—making it easier for Beijing to dominate Japan, South Korea, and everyone else.
Japan’s Essential Role in a Future Korean Peninsula Conflict
Whether triggered by North Korea alone or North Korea (at the very least) backed by China, war on and around the Korean Peninsula will be bloody.The United States will have its hands full and doesn’t want to play marriage counselor between the Koreans and the Japanese.
To fight, much less win, a conflict against North Korea depends on access to bases in Japan to provide essential logistics support and facilitate troop movements. Combat operations, particularly aerial and naval sorties, will be launched from bases in Japan. The seven United Nations Command-Rear bases in Japan are indispensable. And “regular” Japan Self-Defense Force (JSDF) bases will also be supporting the fight, as will the JSDF itself.
To improve the odds and to prevail at the lowest cost in lives, the Japanese and South Koreans need to coordinate defense activities with the Americans in a three-way partnership. It need not be a formal alliance.
But this all needs to be worked out beforehand—not once the shooting starts, or with the Japanese and the South Koreans “talking through” the Americans.
1) Three-way sharing of intelligence to establish a real-time “common operating picture” for U.S., ROK, and Japanese forces. 2) Linked missile defense systems. The missile threat to both South Korea and Japan (and U.S. bases and forces in both nations) is steadily increasing. U.S. territory, such as Guam, is also within range of North Korean missiles. It’s much worse when Chinese missiles are added in. 3) Joint operational talks and planning between the three nations, particularly to allocate roles and establish operational procedures, on or around the Korean Peninsula. 4) Joint cyber security and cyber defense/offense operations. 5) Non-combatant evacuation (NEO) planning and exercises. 6) Exercising and training for all the above.
Precedent for ROK-Japan Cooperation
U.S. forces have been stationed in South Korea and Japan for well over half a century. The Americans have solid longstanding bilateral (though not triangular) relationships with both ROK and Japanese forces.Also, South Korean forces have engaged with Japanese forces in the past. Most recently, they have worked with the Japanese military as part of North Korea sanctions enforcement efforts. And earlier this year, the ROK Navy exercised with the Japanese Navy in the South China Sea—along with the U.S. Navy.
The South Koreans and Japanese have also conducted high-level defense talks—though usually with the Americans present and organizing the meetings.
At least one South Korean army has had a counterpart relationship with a Japan Ground Self-Defense Force regional army, and study tours by officers have gone in both directions. Defense attachés are posted respectively in Seoul and Tokyo.
South Korea also belongs to a three-way intelligence sharing deal with the Americans and the Japanese—known as GSOMIA (General Security of Military Information Agreement)—that lets South Korea and Japan share information about North Korea’s military and nuclear activities directly with each other.
However, the benefits of that cooperation are not widely celebrated in the local media, and PRC-linked political warfare tries to undermine any rapprochement. At the same time, some political leaders do Beijing’s heavy lifting by looking for reasons to scale back cooperation, and vilify the other country.
South Korean President Moon Jae-in came within days of pulling out of GSOMIA with the Japanese in 2019. He relented only under heavy American pressure.
How Deep Is the Animosity?
It’s deep. Each side thinks it is aggrieved more than the other.Japan feels like it has made reparations and apologies—and has already reached an agreement with South Korea on a “full and final” settlement of differences (more than once). Tokyo complains the Koreans keep asking for another apology.
Tokyo is also irked that South Korean administrations periodically play the “Japan card” as a way of drumming up domestic political support.
Under the Moon administration, South Korean courts awarded damages against Japanese companies for using Koreans as forced labor during World War Two, despite a 1965 bilateral agreement settling such claims.
The “comfort women” issue is another perennial cudgel used against Japan—as Tokyo sees it—as are complaints about Japanese politicians visiting Yasukuni Shrine. And there is South Korea’s rubbing of Japan’s noses in the Dokdo/Takeshima islands issue—Japanese territory (according to Tokyo) that the ROK seized from a weakened postwar Japan.
Meanwhile, South Korea reckons it is “right” about all the things the Japanese complain about. In fact, it is risky for anyone in South Korea to publicly suggest otherwise.
While South Korean “leftist” administrations most readily and forcefully play the “Japan card,” conservative administrations do as well. And such demagoguery is effective.
Even Koreans who understand the nation’s broader geopolitical interests, and the need to prioritize a secure future over past resentments, often can’t help themselves.
To quote one U.S. Marine officer who spent many years in South Korea: “The Japanese bring out the worst in the Koreans.”
The Americans are exasperated. They need all the help they can get.
But Washington can’t just tell each side to “get over it.” It is not that easy. The American Civil War animosities lingered in parts of the United States for decades, and many older Americans still resent the Germans and Japanese for World War Two.
But one does wish for more introspection from both South Korea and Japan.
The Japanese colonial era inflicted much human suffering.
But it is worth remembering that Japan was “punished” for its behavior that led up to the war with the Americans: more than 3 million Japanese dead. Every Japanese city of consequence in ashes. Nuclear bombs dropped, with radiation sickening survivors for generations. Japan occupied by a foreign force, which is still in Japan. And Japan had to provide its own “comfort women” scheme for the occupying forces.
And while the Koreans suffered mightily at the hands of the Japanese, one might also consider World War Two allied prisoner-of-war accounts of extraordinary brutality by Korean guards in the Japanese-run POW camps. And just more than 20 years afterwards, South Korean troops in South Vietnam had a sometimes nasty reputation for massacring Vietnamese civilians and murdering prisoners of war. No apologies have been forthcoming.
One is inclined to despair about prospects for the Koreans and Japanese getting along anytime soon, or even over the next hundred years.
But stranger things have happened. Consider the French and the Germans, fighting three ferocious wars between 1870 and 1945, yet coming together in the 1950’s to lay the groundwork for what became the European Union. And even the British and Irish governments and Sinn Fein (the Irish Republican Army or IRA) reached an agreement to end a decades long (the IRA would have said “centuries long”) war in 1998.
A More Active US Role Is Needed
To help these ‘“statesmen” emerge, the Americans could play a more active role in soothing the South Korea-Japan relationship.However, the United States has avoided getting involved in South Korea’s domestic politics.
So, while the Americans remained mute, South Korean administrations and politicians have too often been able to stoke anti-Japanese resentments for political advantage.
In other words, South Korean politicians get the votes—while hampering America’s ability to deter war or to fight a war. Yet, they expect the Americans to fight and die on South Korea’s behalf, and potentially to risk North Korean missile attacks—and one day, nuclear attacks on American cities.
This has also made it harder for Japanese leaders who might otherwise be inclined to make concessions. And it serves as a convenient excuse for some Japanese leaders who don’t wish to make concessions.
The Americans have considerable “capital” in South Korea—not least as a security guarantor. So it should speak up and quietly (or not so quietly) insist on at least grudgingly improved bilateral relations. And this should include military cooperation between the South Korean and the Japanese militaries, as part of an informal (and unstated) trilateral defense scheme for the Korean Peninsula.
Washington should keep in mind that public opinion polls in South Korea reveal overwhelming support for the ROK-U.S. alliance—and the American military presence.
These poll results are telling, given that South Korean extreme leftists (known as “Jusapa”) who dominate the Moon administration are fundamentally anti-American and pro-North Korea. They typically see the United States as an occupying force, and as the reason the peninsula and Koreans are divided. Jusapa view the Japanese as American lapdogs.
If the Americans speak up, the Jusapa may not like it, but a majority of South Koreans just might.
And another note of caution: Even pro-American South Koreans need to be careful about letting resentment of Japan get out of hand. Besides harming defense capabilities, many American citizens (and voters) might question why U.S. troops should fight and die on South Korea’s behalf if Koreans won’t fully cooperate with the United States.
As for Japan, the Americans are similarly committed to dying for Japan and need to request that the Japanese government bend over backwards (even if it feels like “once again”) to try to sort this out.
Of course, it often takes generations to get over history. And, even then, memories linger.
But wallowing in resentment is no more productive for governments and nations than it is for individuals.
One hopes for South Korean and Japanese leaders to come along who speak up for a cooperative present, rather than ones like Lee Jae-myung who seem to be trying to recreate the past through divisive statements about the future.
Japan’s Prime Minister Fumio Kishida just might reciprocate.
And since the United States is footing the bill for both countries’ freedoms—to be paid in American blood (again)—the U.S. government should at least speak up and request some statesmanship.
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