The Political Economy of Transitions to Peace: A Comparative Perspective

5. Government and Big Business: Normalizing Relations between Japan and South Korea

5 GOVERNMENT AND BIG BUSINESS Normalizing Relations between Japan and South Korea Unlike the occupation of the Philippines and Indonesia, which lasted only three years, Japan’s occupation of Korea lasted from 1910 until 1945. It took twenty more years for a normalization treaty to be signed, in 1965. Even then, the treaty triggered massive domestic opposition in the Republic of Korea (hereafter ROK or South Korea). Economic relations between the two countries, however , developed and even flourished over the years. These intense and highly developed economic relations did not spill over into the cultural-social sphere until the late 1990s, however. This case raises several interesting issues that shed light on the role of economic factors in the transition to peace and also highlight some of the remaining questions. First, this case, perhaps more than the Southeast Asian case, resembles the Middle Eastern situations in the level of preexisting and deeply ingrained animosity between the parties. At the same time, the developments over time are quite different. Second, the Japanese-Korean case, at least until the 1990s, exhibits the limits of spillover from economic normalization to cultural-social normalization. It is quite impressive to see the gap between the extraordinary levels of bilateral trade and FDI, on the one hand, and the obvious animosity and resentment that persist. In light of that persistent animosity , exploring the developments in Japanese-Korean relations further accentuates the difficulty of defining “peace.” How does one aggregate high economic interdependence with high levels of animosity and the heavy emotional baggage of history? Finally, this case has also raised the question of the appropriate 107 Press-Barnathan CH5:Press-Barnathan CH5 4/1/09 5:04 PM Page 107 historical cut-off. When can we say that the transition to peace has been completed ? There is no simple answer because it depends, once again, on one’s perception of what “peace” is. An Overview of the Shift from Conflict to Peace It is customary to begin any discussion of Korean antipathy toward the Japanese with the thirty-five years of Japanese colonial rule. However, this animosity runs much deeper and further back in history, to the sixteenth century and the invasions of the Japanese warlord Toyotomi Hideyoshi. Those incursions led to unprecedented destruction in the Korean peninsula (later matched by the devastation of the war in 1950–1953). In the nineteenth century, Japan fought both the Chinese (1894–1895) and the Russians (1904–1905) in order to establish its power and authority in Korea. Only then does the time line reach the long period of colonial rule. During that period, any internal resistance to Japanese rule was crushed, and even peaceful demonstrations for independence in 1919 were met with brutality. Beginning in the early 1930s, the Japanese tried to force the “Japanization” of the Koreans, not allowing them to learn their language in school or use it at home, forcing them to “Japanize” their names, and then abusing Korean resources to support the war effort in Japan.1 During the war itself, the Japanese army abused many Korean women, forcing them to serve as “comfort women,” which has remained a thorny issue in the relationship to this day.2 Unlike the Philippines and Indonesia, Korea was already a unified independent state before it was taken over by the Japanese. Consequently, Korean nationalism has fermented under Japanese rule, and, to a large extent, it came to be identified with anti-Japanese sentiments. This historical animosity and negative historical memory is deeply ingrained in the mind-set of Koreans and Japanese through formal and informal institutions. Even today the two main national holidays in Korea celebrate Korean patriotism by remembering the struggle for independence from Japanese rule.3 After World War II ended, the southern part of Korea regained its independence when the United States took control of that zone while the Soviet Union took control of the northern zone. Twenty years later, South Korea and Japan signed a treaty normalizing relations. (Korea was not a signatory on the Treaty of San Francisco because it was not an independent state during the war.) However, even beyond the very strong anti-Japanese sentiments that still pre108 government and big business Press-Barnathan CH5:Press-Barnathan CH5 4/1/09 5:04 PM Page 108 vailed when the treaty was signed in 1965, South Korea had several fundamental issues to resolve with the Japanese. One was the...