 For others, I'm Vice President for Studies here at the Carnegie Endowment, and it's my pleasure to welcome you here today. I'd like to begin with just a bit of a brief background about today's event of our May. This year, 2015, is a year of reflection. It's the 70th anniversary of the end of World War II, which has prompted us to consider legacies from that terrible conflict. These legacies include the impact of hastily defined borders, unresolved territorial disputes, the use of nuclear weapons, but also positive legacies like the creation of the United Nations and other post-war institutions. Despite the onset of the Cold War after World War II, the post-war period generally embraced economic openness, technological development, and a level of interdependence that would have been hard to imagine in the 1930s. This dynamic has had a profound impact on Asia, on the U.S.-Japan alliance, which has been a big promoter of this trend and significantly contributed to these positive developments. Carnegie's Japan program, therefore, is conceiving of this past as prologue series of events as a way to put our reflection to use and apply it to some of the issues relating to our future. Here this year, in subsequent events, we'll consider other issues relating to Asia's political and economic development, nuclear non-proliferation, energy issues, and economic issues. But today we begin at a different level of reflection, because this year, 2015, is not only the 70th anniversary of the end of World War II, but it marks the 50th year since Japan and the Republic of Korea normalized relations and signed their treaty of basic relations. Over the past five decades, bilateral relations between Japan and Korea have far surpassed those of previous eras in terms of security cooperation, economic interdependence, intellectual and cultural exchanges. Yet the scars of the past almost inevitably continue to present challenges towards more fundamental reconciliation and deeper collaboration between these two important countries. So our aim today, here at Carnegie at this event, is to help foster intellectual exchange and public discussion about the evolution and the complexity and the future directions of a productive Japanese-Korean relationship. Our goal is to go beyond this sort of narrow media stories about recent irritants to these relations and put them in a broader context of shared strategic interests between the two countries, and also, of course, including the United States. Our purpose is not to diminish the importance and the difficulty of reconciling, clashing interpretations of history, but instead to cast Japan-Korea relations in a more comprehensive light involving wider security, foreign policy, energy, economic issues. We'll look for strategies to facilitate long-term progress in bilateral relations between these two key U.S. allies and consider it an appropriate U.S. role as well. We're honored to have two highly distinguished diplomats from Japan and Korea with us here today, ambassadors Oshima and Shin, who will be part of our second panel this afternoon looking at the future of Japan-Korea relations. But we'll begin our first panel by providing the necessary context for the policy challenges ahead. I'm grateful to Professors Kim and Kimura for contributing to this panel to which we will turn straight away. So I'll turn now the microphone over to my colleague, Jim Schoff, Senior Associate here at the Endowment who leads the Japan program, who's going to be moderating the first session. Jim. Thank you very much, Tom. I appreciate that. And welcome, everyone. My name is Jim Schoff. I'm a Senior Associate here at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and Head of the Japan program. And it's my pleasure to kick us off in our first panel. As Tom said, we have two panels today. The first will examine the evolution of Japan-Korea relations since 1965 and the correlation between political, economic trends and the gains and setbacks and bilateral ties. And we'll also consider the U.S. factor as well. The second panel will be moderated by my colleague, Joon Kim, which then will look at three major future national strategy policy areas from both Japan and Korea perspectives, looking at the North Korea challenge, in effect preserving security and fostering Korean unification, the continued rise of China, and third, the broader economic including energy and environment priorities in the region. And we also concluding after our second panel, we'll have a networking reception here at Carnegie, so I encourage you to stay through the second panel and join us at the reception as well. So we're all investing a little bit of time this afternoon. And I'd like to say a quick word about what we hope to gain from this investment. I hope that by the end of this afternoon we'll have gained a little bit of insight. Overall, the main idea behind this passes prologue series is that if we're going to have a foreign policy that is not reactive, then you need accurate assumptions about the future to actually begin to plan and how you're going to approach those challenges. And the past by itself is not necessarily sufficient to give you, I think, accurate assumptions about the future. So that's what we're aiming for today. Before we start the first panel, I just had this one slide I wanted to show, which is from the Japanese Cabinet Office surveys that are conducted throughout the years. I've gone back to about 1985 or so. And this is, albeit one view of the dynamic that we're talking about today there, but it is reflective, I think, if you look at polls in Korea as well or other estimates of evaluating where the relationship between Japan and Korea is at any given time. You see with the blue being, these are Japanese attitudes about Korea, South Korea, liking Korea in the light blue, their perception of how good relations are in the dark blue, dislike in the orange, and then the perception that relations are bad in the red. And I think the current situation stands out as particularly troubling in this regard, although to some extent the fact that the perception of how good or bad relations are is not quite synonymous with like or dislike. But it's also suggests that certainly throughout the Cold War era, but also certainly in the post-Cold War era, there's been quite a certain amount of oscillation. And at the same time, other aspects of the relationship, if I put charts up about and Professor Kimura has some regarding trade relations and investment, you'll see straight arrows going up. So it's a very complex and dynamic relationship, and that's what we're going to talk a little bit about today. So quickly to introduce our guests, we'll begin with Professor Kimura, Khan, Professor at the Graduate School of International Cooperation Studies at Kobe University. Thank you for joining us here today. He focuses on Korea studies and Japan-Korea relations. He's also been a visiting scholar and professor at Korea University, University of Washington, Harvard University, and Sejong Institute, and a prolific writer on these issues. So we're very pleased to have him with us today. Next to him on his right is Dr. Kim Tae-hyo, equally comfortable in academic and policy circles, Professor of Political Science at Sungkyung Kwan University in Korea, but currently a visiting scholar at the University of California, Berkeley. So we brought him over from the West Coast. And thank you for joining us here today. Of course, before going back into the university, he had served a distinguished time as Senior Secretary to President Lee Myeong-bak for national security strategy until July 2012. And then to his right, our next-door neighbor, Victor Cha, the Director of Asian Studies and in the Department of Government and School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University. In addition, he's a senior advisor and holds the Korea Chair at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. He also served in government as Director of Asian Affairs at the National Security Council. And particularly appropriate today, author of an award-winning book, his PhD work that led to some very useful work in my own studies on the US, Korea, Japan security triangle, alignment despite antagonism. So with no further ado, Kimura-sensei, let me turn it over to you. And then we'll hear a little bit from Professor Kim as well, and Victor is our discussant today. Thank you. Yeah. Thank you, Jim. I'm going to change the slide. Or you could do it from here, or whatever you prefer. Oh, my slide. Oh. Just advance here. Sorry. Yeah, thank you. Thank you again. Thank you, James. My name is Kangyut-Flock from Koryu University. And as he introduced, I'm starting about something about Japan-Korea relations. And today, I'm going to make some basic explanations, my explanations about the Japan-South-Korea relations, changing situation, structural situation in the 50 years. Now, as you see, now we are having very serious situations, especially on the historical issues or territorial issues between Japan and South Korea. And as you may think that Japan-South-Korea had repeated the same kind of things again and again in the 50 years. But you also have to remember that now we in the situation, our top leaders cannot meet each other for three years. That kind of situation can never be seen in the previous 50 years. So here, I'd like to explain how, why we are facing these kind of situations, and why the possible gap of the two countries are increasing here. And this is the basic situation about today. As everybody knows, after the former president of the known party, the President, Dr. Takashima, our diplomatic relations are deadlocked. And the morphology, even the public opinions of two countries are going to worsen and worsen. We have never seen that kind of situation in the 50 years. And more seriously, for example, different from the situation one decade ago, you may know that we had some historical dispute, especially about Yasukuni, in 2005 and 2006 between Japan and South Korea. But at the time, we still had some hopes. We had two kinds of hopes. First one is that anyway, the situation will be made by some kind of populist leader at the time, Koizumi and Nomuhyo. So if the government changes, we expect that the situation might be improved. And the other kind of people say that anyway, we have a huge inter-exchanges of the people and the economy and the society each year. So in the long run, our situation will be improved. We had two kinds of expectations and hopes. But now, in Japan and in South Korea, there are not so many people who talk about that kind of hopes. The point is why we, again, have to be in this kind of situation today. And before starting that, I should show this data. This is the data from my paper, which was published on the Journal of Korea 30 in 2011. And this shows the frequency of the historical dispute between Japan and South Korea and the territorial dispute since 1940 to 2014. As you see, the frequency of the dispute is increasing after 1990s. This means several things, several things. First things that the situation, the dispute of history or territory between Japan and South Korea, just cannot be explained by the existence of the issues. If the issue itself is important, it is important. We have to discuss the same kind of issue again and again on the same level. But because here, we found something happened, something happened in 1980s or 1990s. So we have to check what kind of things actually happened in these 50 years, especially after 1990s. And this is my hypothesis. As I said, the two-day Japan and South Korea relation disputes never can be directly explained by just by the existence of the issues, like the big teams of the cohort women or a Takishima doctor or Yasukuni or something. That's something. Now, and of course, we regarded that kind of issue always important, some importance. But then we need to know there's some other element which is influencing the today's situation. So I found that I picked up the two variables. First one is the important issue. And the second one is the importance of the counterpart. I suspect if the counterpart is very important in the kind of situation, the business people and the positions and the diplomats will make their best efforts to improve the situation. As soon as we see the problems, you see that some information even from this data. For example, in 1985, Prime Minister Nakasone visited Yasukuni. It was in 1985. But you cannot see that very high the ratios of the dispute in 1980s. It is because the Japanese and the South Korea government made their best efforts to solve the problem very quickly. So the situation did not continue for humans and the few years like this, like today. And sometimes, especially in South Korea, some kind of people expect, oh, no, no. This is just a result of the booming of Japanese nationalities. But the reality is more complicated. This is the data about the descriptions of one of the Japanese major textbooks. As you see, the description on Japanese textbooks about colonial period is never decreasing since 1980s, since 1970s. No, it's actually increasing until 2005. After 2005, we have a different story. But anyway, it means that we cannot explain the escalation of the dispute since 1990s just by the booming of the Japanese nationalities. I think you can understand this one very well. If Japanese nationalities are already booming since 1980s, Japanese policy makers, prime ministers in 1970s and 1960s must be very liberal. But you might know that the prime minister, for example, Sato or Kishi are never a liberal person than the Murayama or Miyazawa prime minister in 1990s. So we have to find out the kind of the reasons. So I'd like to focus on the economic data. Here, this is the data of the South Korean trade for the major partner. It means that China, Japan, US. And of course, the Chinese is increasing very dramatically. But here, we see that some of the development of the trade between Japan and South Korea. So sometimes somebody said that also we are okay. We are in our international relations are increasing. But no, sometimes the amount of the exchange is not so important. The more important things is the share and importance in the economy. This is the data of the share of the major countries, three countries in South Korean trade. And Japanese were in here, the purple, yeah, purple. And here you see that Japanese, that whole South Korean people, the importance of the Japanese economy had dramatically decreased since the last part of the 1970s. And here again, I have to say a few things. This is not just a result of the Japanese economic slump because it started in 1970s. And we also can see the same kind of situation in the United States. The US share is also decreasing. And somebody said that, oh, it is because of the Chinese expansion. No, of course partly yes. But the Chinese just took 20% of share, 23 or 25. But the US and Japan have lost almost 60% share in 40 years. China covered just 20%. The other 40% was taken by some other countries. Of course, the reason is very simple. The end of the Cold War and South Korean development and globalization, globalization. And in spite of the increasing of the amount of the exchanges between two countries, even in Japan, the importance of the South Korean economy is not increasing. So now it is very easy for us to find the difference of the situation. For example, today and 1980s. 1980s, people regarded Japan-South Korea as an important partner. So business people pushed the pollution and the pollution made huge efforts to improve the city relations. But as some of you see, today we cannot find such kind of sincere effort among Japanese government, Japanese medias, Japanese society, and the South Korean ones. South Korean ones. Simply because we are not each other, it's so important anymore. Now we have to, we are in the situation, have to find the reason for the cooperation. Okay, this is another kind of data I just won't say that the same kind of thing is happening between Japan and China. And also, the situation is changing even in the military's part of society, military most of the time. This is the data of the military expenditure on U.S. base, U.S. database. And now here you see that the South Korea is catching up the amount of the Japanese military expenditure very quickly. Because they are spending almost 3% of the GDP scale of the military expenditures. So even though the Japanese column is much bigger than the South Korean ones, but the percentage of the military expenditure is much bigger than Japanese. So if this trend continues, okay, I think that the South Korean military expenditure might be more than Japanese in 10 years, in 10 years. You know, anyway, now we are living in this kind of situation. So it is very rational for us to see, for example, in 2012, Homa played an email box set that Japan is not so important anymore like all days. So he can, he said, we can say, we can say something against Japan now. We should say something against Japan. This is a very symbolic message from the South Korean society and the South Korean politicians. But, you know, of course, you have to take another kind of point, strategic one. You may expect even in the situation of the decline of the importance of the Japanese economy to South Korea or Chinese, you know, because of the expansions of the Chinese influence, we should, but we can make a sign of, find a reason for the cooperation. But unfortunately, this is not the real situation of the society of two countries. For example, when the Pakuna government was established in 2013, or to 2013, you know, the Japanese government sent a message, so-called value-oriented policy. You know, they say, or we say, that, you know, we are sharing the same kind of diplomatic, you know, the culture and ideologies. So, Japanese government said that we can make corporations. But unfortunately, South Korean government declined that, declined that, because for South Korean people, it means, you know, it means that the Japanese are saying, you know, fight together against China, which has a different kind of ideology. And here, you know, the things we have to think about, why they point it, why the Japan and South Korea have very different kind of understanding on the booming China, big China, okay? I just want to say two points. You know, this is the data of the, some data to show the importance of the Chinese economy on the two countries, two countries. You know, sometimes, you know, we have to, you know, be careful about the way we're using the statistics here. You know, for example, if we just check the share, Chinese share in the trade, Japanese percentages, and the South Korean percentage is almost same, 25, 20,000, three or something. So sometimes, you know, people tend to misunderstand that Japan and the South Korea are depending on China's economy on the same level. But no, no. Now this is the data, which I compare the scale of the trade with China and GDP, and GDP. And for South Korean, you know, the percentage is 70%, more than 70%. But for Japanese, the number is just 6%. It means that for South Koreans, China is three times as important than the whole Japanese, the Japanese. Of course, yes, and actually, you know, this is the data for the World Bank, and how much the trade with China are contributing to the GDPs. Also, the contribution level of the Chinese trade in South Korea is three times bigger than Japanese one. And the reason why is very simple. South Korean economy is very much dependent on the trade, very much dependent on the trade. So their trade dependence ratio is almost 100%. So if you know, so if the scale of the Chinese trade is almost 25% of the trade, of the trade, the scale of such a Chinese trade against GDP also must be 25%. This is a very simple calculation. But Japan, as you see, with United States, one of the countries which are not so much dependent on the trade, international trade. So simply because our economy is not dependent on the foreign trade, so the importance of the Chinese trade on Japanese economies have to be much, much smaller than the South Korea, than the South Korea. And lastly, strategic one, more strategical. The last point I want to say is that today, Japan and South Korea has a very different understanding on the, here, your problem, U.S. policy against China. If you have a chance to talk with the Japanese diplomats or Japanese media paper journalists and the South Korean journalists, South Korean diplomats, you, you know, if you can see that the other different understanding are very different. Normally, South Korean regard U.S. policy against China more corporative. They say even for U.S., China is a very important partner. So they expect U.S. will not take so hard line policy against China. It is a natural, it's a normal understanding of South Korea's strategy. But in Japan, you know, maybe you can, it is very hard for you to find the same kind of articles on the Japanese newspaper like ASAHI, OIO, MURI, or Sankei. Even liberal ASAHI wrote or write that the understanding the U.S. policy against China is a competitive one, competitive one. The point is why we are having a different kind of understanding of the holding policy of one country? One of the reason is U.S. expectation and AWAI expectations. Of the law of the Japanese, number four, the United States strategy. As you see, this is a very simple table which shows a different level of the number of the three countries. And now you see that Japan still has a very big ships, Japan is a very strange country. We just have 143 ships but the number of the, you know, free gates or destroyers almost 42. We just have just big ships. It means that Japan can make operation on the Blue Water Sea, Blue Water Sea. So some U.S. people expect Japanese to play some important role on East China Sea or South China Sea. And we also expect China U.S. will expect us. It's bad. But, you know, unfortunately, South Korea number of horses is very small. So for the South Korean diplomats or policy makers, it is very rare for us, for them, to hear, to have such kind of talk with the American people expecting the very positive role of the South Korean military program against China. You know? So, you know, in South Korea, you know, the voice of the, how can I say, the soft liners in the United States sound lively. But in Japan, hard-liners voice sound very loudly. So because of the different pipes and different message of the United States, now we are having a very different understanding about U.S. police against China. So, you know, even on the strategy to take the issues, now we are in the situation, we cannot find a way of the cooperation together. South Korean people regard Japan as a obstacle between U.S. and China. Because Japan is taking hard-line policies. So they say, we are blocking, we are breaking a peaceful relationship between U.S. and China. But Japanese say, no, no, no, no, no, South Korea is going to the side of China. So we cannot believe South Korea anymore. We say, you know, the many policy makers and the diplomats and the journalists have that kind of understanding. So in that kind of situation, you know, we, it is very hard for us to have the cooperation. Okay, lastly, so, you know, my point is very simple. Anyway, you know, in all days, we have a reason for us to have a cooperation. But we now we are almost losing the reason for the cooperation. But still, Japan and South Korea relationships, of course, is important. So, but, you know, we have no idea about how to cooperate with each other and why the counterpart is important. And why Japan is important for South Korea. Japan has no message and South Korea has no message. So maybe we should restart the relationship, you know, to try to look for the reason for the cooperation. Thank you so much. Thank you. Well, let's turn to Professor Kim for to add to this discussion. Kimura sensei took us quite a long way. Oh no, that's all right. Professor Kim, you can use the podium if you like or you can just sit and talk. Thanks very much for allowing us to visit Washington DC again and meet good friends and very good audience here. Following up on Mr. Kimura Kahn's very nice statistics and quantitative approach, I'd like to add up some qualitative approach showing the cause and effect of Korea-Japan relations and then a point out some future challenges and opportunities in front of us, in front of bilateral security and economic relations. As Kimura already mentioned, we can identify some importance, a turning point for the last 70 years. I would pick up 1965 and 1990 and 2012. So these three, a transition period tells us some cause or logics, why we saw experienced Korea-Japan relations back and forth and the tribunals depending upon internal and external environment. Japan was, Korea was liberalized August 1945. So it took 20 years for both countries to re-normalize their diplomatic relations. In the meantime, Lee Seung-man government, the founder of the Republic of Korea and who decided to ally with the U.S., it was still anti-Japanese normally. It was very natural because Korean people never forget the recent past while they're trying to rebuild their economy and the national identity. But it was also timing of a Cold War period and mutual rivalry and a severe identity battle between U.S. and Soviet side was rapidly growing during these 1950s and 60s. And Park Jung-hee regime grasped the power early 1960s and he became a more practical leader in that he needed U.S. economic support and then as a neighboring countries, President Park appreciated the importance of a economic cooperation between Japan and Korea. Particularly at the time as a poor country, Korea needed technological support from Japan and also badly needed the Japanese investment. And also in a broader picture, Soviet threat was a huge factor for both Japan and Korea as a democratic countries and also a immediate threat of North Korea pushed Japan and Korea to think about some sort of ties between the two countries. And it was a U.S. State Department and Washington D.C. who made a critical role to push and make some political pressure and sometimes a very nice gesture and persuasion for Japan and Korean leaders to decide to normalize their diplomatic relations. So my tentative conclusion here is that it was a normalization bridged by short-term interest, not genuine understanding. So Korea, Japan people was not that ready to forgive and to reconcile. But economic, strategic, and military regions pushed these two countries to bind together. 1990, as you know, Soviet collapsed and history problems emerged from hibernation. Not anymore, Japan, Korea needed to worry about Soviet threat anymore. Only small North Korean threat exists. China was still very slowly growing at the time, in the early 1990s. I remember I was a graduate student in the United States during 1990s, entire time. And those time was a peak for Japan. Every management class in the United States tried to learn how Japanese company became so successful. So still 1990s, Japan and Korea did not have any room to worry about Chinese military and economic threat at the time. That means Korea, Japan for the first time started to doubt that do we still need US security umbrella? Is this so critical? The alliance has been so unequal. We has been growing a lot. So a lot of bilateral relations, two sets of these democratic alliances underwent a lot of transitions in terms of so far agreement, environmental issues and US military criminals in their domestic societies. A lot of confusions. And also one important factor was the comfort woman. It was Japanese experts and scholars who for the first time found out that this issue is something strange. They could reveal some documents showing that Japanese authority and governments was somehow related to a conscription process and management of the comfort woman during the Pacific War. So it was not until it was not handled or it was not an issue until early 1990s. And 1965, normalization agreement of course did not mention this comfort woman issue. So this one became a very significant litmus test for the two countries regardless of the existing 1965 agreement. The next turning point is as you well know, 2012. And until that time, both governments continuously made a lot of efforts. Two of them, Professor Kimura Kano already mentioned. In 1995, there was a Murayama statement. And in 2010, during the middle of the Rimyeongba government, there was a Gan Naoto statement. These two prime minister level statements pointed out the apology on the colonial period. 1985, there was a Miyazawa statement saying that Japan will some pay attention to the description of Japanese history textbooks. 1993, there was a Gono statement acknowledging that Japanese government have something to do with the comfort woman issue and let's look for some solutions in the future. Then why suddenly, 2012, all these efforts become too nearly in vain. You can remember the DJ administration and Nomuian administration, these 10 years of South Korean liberal leadership did not pay enough attention to North Korean nuclear threats. Rather, they diligently tried to give economic incentives to North Korea and they believe that this is the best way to make a new peace treaty between Seoul and Pyongyang. At that time, Seoul and Japan mutually gave a suspicion with each other. Japan thought that Seoul is something strange because they are helping Kim Jong-il. And Seoul at that time believed that Japan is not helping us. We need to improve inter-Korean relations. So in other words, on history issues, President Kim Dae-jung and Nomuian relatively did not have so a busy time to battle, make a battle with each other but in security issues, a Korea-Japan relations was not that good. If you remember the previous government, Imeong-Bak-Wol-Tum administration, first four and a half years, the Japan-Korea relations became the remarkably good and the positive relations. It is unusually a very good romance between these two governments. Korea was a conservative anti-communist government, and Japan, three years of Japan's a LDP Japan Democratic Party leadership was much more favorable to the past history issues compared to the previous liberal Democratic Party leadership. So these very strange but fresh and clicking relationship between Japanese liberals and Korean conservatives made a very good job on security and military cooperation. So US, Japan, Korea trilateral relations suddenly became strengthened and Russia and China was kind of frustrated to see that very good security relations between Seoul and Tokyo. And then as you remember, a G-Somya broke down and President Lee's visit to Dokdo, Takashima and then a Japan leadership was suddenly changed and it went back to LDP leadership. After Noda cabinet, Abe became the new star for the Japanese strong leadership. So we can say and explain these three and a half years of current struggle in terms of Japan-Korea relations. I would point out domestic politics and societal transition in both society and then some structural international environment helped to aggravate these two countries' mutual relations which is that there was also a power transition between Korea and Japan. Korea is relatively small compared to China and Japan's economy but the gap between Japan and Korea has been a vastly narrowed down which led to Korean people's growing nationalism and Japan's nervousness about its growing neighbor. So these relations also coupled with their traditional animosity on past history issues was a hot potato for Japanese and Korean politicians. Conventional wisdom has been that Korean conservatives are pro-American and anti-North Korean and they are very reluctant about the Chinese intention and Korean liberals tends to be more pro-North Korean and anti-American but in Korean assembly and lawmakers and the process of general election for the last three years for both righties and lefties in Korean society the best in Japan has become very popular menu to easily achieve public attention. That is same for Japan's Abe cabinet. Japan has been pretty much straighted by the Chinese factor and also Japan is nervous about the future of its democratic ties with Washington and Seoul and Abe's economic card was Abe Nomics and Abe's North Korea card was his promise to handle the kidnapped issues and his another issue was to make Japan stronger and to make more responsible international contributions to North East Asia. So Japan's people's strong support for Abe also was related to these very regrettable incidences happened between Japan and Korea. Let me just suggest you the future prospects and also what can we do? Of course, Ambassador Shin and Oshima will more concretely talk about diplomatic and foreign policy solutions following session. So I'll just minimize my distance of political suggestions and policy suggestions. My first question is that the puzzle about the long-term future path of Japan-Korea relations and I believe it boils down to two interrelated questions. One is can the two countries sincerely reconcile at all? Would it be 100% sometime one or two hundred in the future or the maximum we can anticipate is just 75% that is my first question. And second question is then what kind of non-history cooperation can be available for these both countries? My answer for the first question is that a complete resolution would be almost impossible several hundred years from now. That is my intended conclusion at this moment. Why? Because comfort woman can be settled in a couple of years or three or four years maybe from now and this issue became the most important critical issues before the bilateral relations. But the problem is Prime Minister Abe does not seem to be so willing he does not seem to have so strong willingness to tackle this difficult problem. And I also feel that a Korean government is not that ready to give assurance to Japanese leaders that this one is going to be clearly accepted by Korean public if they ever agree up to some concrete agreement. But the other problem, the territorial issue, this is not about the content. It's the psychology of Korean people. Whenever Japanese textbook and leaders argue for the territorial demand, Korean people automatically believes that Japanese people is way far from sincere apology. This one clearly shows that Japan never changes. So it's not about territory, map or 300-year-old old record. Just a Korean automatic response. The other one is textbook. Korean schoolgirls and Korean high school students and Japan youngsters read different history textbooks. Japan believes that we did something wrong but we were also victimized by the atomic bomb and also we were defeated by United Nations so we have to reborn as a peace-loving country. Korean people believes that Japan has some sort of an offender consciousness and victim consciousness normally toward the Western society and Japan is not fully giving attention toward its neighboring countries in terms of resolving past history. So if two strangers meet with each other, Japan's, Koreans and Japanese, they have fundamentally different picture about their 70-year-long past history. So this one will continuously give us trouble when we think about military, security and cultural societal relations between Japan and Korea. So second question, if a complete resolution between these two countries on history is impossible, how much cooperation can the two countries achieve on their issues? As Kimura Gan mentioned, one issue will be China, the other issue will be North Korea and Korean unification, third one issue will be FTA and economic relations. On China, there is no doubt among strategists of Japan, Korea, United States that very close and formidable security collaboration among Seoul, Tokyo and Washington would be a win-win game for each of these three countries. That is a common sense. The problem is China's weight on Korea, on Japan and US is different across economic and security issues. And relatively speaking, Korea's anxiety and zeal and Korea's importance for this trilateral tie could be relatively weaker than Japan and Washington. But that does not mean that Korea is leading toward China because Korea need a fundamentally very robust bilateral relationship with the United States in order to handle North Korean threat and prepare for future unification. So what I'm saying is that if Korean and Japanese leaders can find a very good balance between public perception and its strategic need, I think there will be enough room for these three countries to reinforce their security ties with each other. North Korea, Korean people believes Japan's collective self-defense with Australia and United States is more a threat or more an uncomfortable issue than a welcoming factors handling Chinese and North Korean factors. I think this is not right, but it's up to future leaders and future policy makers again how to clearly and easily understand Korean people to accept that Japan factor could be a very welcoming and positive factors when they think about a changing North Korea and also the unification between North and South. Finally, the TPP will make a positive stimulus for Japan and Korea to reopen their FTA issues. Not only bilateral but also trilateral free trade agreement among Beijing, Japan and Seoul. It has been a stalemate for the last two years because of different economic structure and particularly between Korea and Japan, they have some sensitive issues with each other. But as Japanese agricultural market and American automobile industry has been reconciled and opened up through this TPP, I think it will become much more easier for Seoul and Tokyo to speed up their negotiations on bilateral and trilateral FTAs. Of course there will be some political connotations. So my conclusion is that there is a perception gap for Japanese and Korean public on the issues of history and on the issues of strategic collaboration. And there is a strategic gap also for Chinese and North Korean leaders. They don't seem to be so afraid of Japan-Korea cooperation because Japan and Korea has been fighting with each other for the last three years. But in reality, you can make Chinese and North Korean counterpart to believe that Japan-Korea relations would be very powerful. And sometimes very challengeable for North Korea to think about any further provocation for China to play around these democratic relations. So it's up to future leadership and that is my tentative conclusion. Thank you. That's terrific. Dr. Kim, thank you very much. That's a great compliment to the Professor Kimura's presentation. Victor, let me give you a shot at sort of adding an American perspective to this and then we'll foster a little dialogue amongst ourselves on this. Well, I won't be too long, Jim, because there's so much that's been put out there. I'm sure there are a lot of comments and questions from the audience. Let me just make a few points. First, really, I think great presentations by both. Thank you, Jim, for doing this and Tom for his program, past his prologue. I think it's a great program. I have a couple of sets of comments. The first is that we all know that we're in a, is the first is a perspective of history. We all know that we're in a difficult period in the relationship, as Tehill said, over the past few years. But if we look at it in a broader context, to me, the story of the Japan-Korea relationship is not how bad it is, but how good it has been despite all of the historical problems and difficult issues between them. In many ways, as Tehill mentioned, it was a forced marriage in 1965 when neither side was really ready. And in spite of that, if you look over the past 50 years, there's actually been more periods, and you could probably code this, there've been more periods of cooperation in this relationship than there have been friction. We've just had a very bad period now, the past three years, and that's why we focus on it so much. So that's the first point I wanted to make. The second, I think, from a U.S. perspective is that for the most part, I think the U.S. default policy has been to certainly try to encourage, persuade, in some cases, coerce as much cooperation as possible between Japan and Korea, and among the trilateral alliance relationship, has U.S. policy has always been to try to push for that and try to stay away, to keep an arms distance away from the difficult bilateral slash territorial slash historical issues between the two countries. And so I think in many ways, the U.S. view has been, we accept as Kimura-san showed in his graph that there is this baseline of his history and difficult issues in the bilateral relationship. It is always there. It is never gonna go away. And from an operational policy perspective for the United States is, how do you continue to manufacture, promote pragmatic cooperation in spite of that baseline of differences? Occasionally, that baseline will erupt and it will mar pragmatic cooperation, as we saw on JISOMIA and some other issues. But for the most part, I think operational U.S. policy has always been, how do we forge that pragmatic cooperation, knowing that it's very difficult to resolve the histories between the two countries. And so in that sense, it's not that different from Europe or other places where there still is a baseline of history in the French-German relationship and other relationships in Europe, but the operative factor has always been how do you forge pragmatic cooperation in spite of that? So for me, the question is then, when does that baseline rise up and disrupt the pragmatic cooperation? If there is this constant baseline, I think it was the gray area in Kimura-San's graph, when does that rise up? And so contrary to, and I have specific comments on Kimura-San's paper, but contrary to the argument that it is about the degree of trade dependence that South Korea has on China, I think that probably the most important factor, and unfortunately, I don't have a scientific explanation for this, but the most important factor to me, again, based on studying this relationship and working on it in government, is the most important factor for when history starts to mar the pragmatic relationship is when one side or the other tries to change the status quo, right? The status quo is not satisfactory to anyone. It's not satisfactory to Japan. It's not satisfactory to Korea, but it is the status quo. And whenever there is an attempt by one side or the other to change it, that's when you get a real terrible spiraling of the historical issues. Now, the education ministry's approval of textbooks, that's not changing the status quo. That is cyclical. That happens all the time. Takashima day, that's cyclical. That happens all the time. But when you have things like the South Korean president, Rizin Tokdo, right? Takeshima Island. That was a change in the status quo because it now set a precedent for every future South Korean president to maybe have to do that, right? Or when there are intimations early on in the Abe administration about reinterpreting the Kono statement, right? You know, the Moriyama apology on Comfort One. That, again, intimates suggest the changing of the status quo. And I think that's when you sort of get the really, the bad dynamics that come out of that. Having said that, I think that we are sort of on a positive incline now. I think the relationship is getting better. Certainly at the bureaucratic level, there's all the bilateral dialogue is back on track. It's all back on. The only piece that's missing now is sort of the summit meeting between the two leaders. There are opportunities. There was a meeting at UNJA and there are a lot of opportunities coming up, whether it's the CJK summit in Seoul, G20, the Paris climate meetings. There are a whole bunch of opportunities for these two leaders to meet on the side. So I think that it's gonna get better. It's not gonna get worse provided nobody does anything to try to change the status quo again. In terms of the future, there's two points I wanna make. The first is to me the most difficult issue right now in the Japan-Korea relationship is not Korea's growing trade dependence on China because I think there's data there to show why that doesn't affect Korea's strategic alignment vis-à-vis the United States and Japan. To me the most difficult issue right now is we've seen a shift in Japanese opinions on Korea. And one in which you could almost say that Japan is starting to strategically write off Korea as being less important. And we see it in the Ministry of White Papers and these are other sorts of things. In the past we've had difficult praise in the bilateral relationship. We haven't seen that, right? Where there has been a shift in public opinion. The Japanese public opinion takes a long time to move but when it moves, it moves decisively. And I think the biggest casualty of this three-year difficult period has been a shift in public opinion in Japan as Kimura-san's poll show. And I think at the policy level a sort of writing off Korea's strategic importance. And how you shift that back I think is a big issue. It's a big issue. It should be a big issue for the United States. It should be of something concerned to Korea. And I think from a Japanese perspective the biggest concern going forward is to try to understand, to get a better understanding of Korea's view on China. Which I think folks have already mentioned. I had, I wrote a piece for Foreign Affairs this week where I said that President Park's visit to the Victory Day celebrations of the Chinese in September, on September 3rd, was not so much about gravitating away from Japan and the United States but was about a new type of diplomacy that she was trying to implement. Basically a trilateral diplomacy that was really focused on trying to bring the United States, China, and Korea together. I mean, because she met with Xi Jinping on September 3rd. Xi Jinping came here September 25th. She's gonna see Obama October 16th. The CJK summit is gonna take place at the end of October. This I think is all part of an effort to try to forge on her part better cooperation on the United States, Korea, and China with regard to North Korea. And so again, I don't think what's driving Korea's gravitation towards China is trade dependence. I think it's much more strategic and it's much more about North Korea. It's not at all about Japan. It's much more about North Korea. Having said that, right? Having said that, there are two issues. The first is if this trilateral effort is about US, Korea, China cooperation in building more strategic cooperation in Northeast Asia, apropos the Napsi concept, you can't do that without Japan. You cannot build a vision for Northeast Asian cooperation. Korea cannot build a vision for Northeast Asia cooperation without Japan. And the second piece of this is the honeymoon in Korea, China relations, I think, is interesting, it's important, it's significant, but it really, the honeymoon has not been tested. Because the real test, the engagement with Xi Jinping will be when North Korea does the next provocation. Because I would argue, and Tae-ho was there, so he could say better than I, one of the reasons why the Korea-China relationship was bad after 2010 between South Korea and China was because of Cheonan and Yongkang, where the South Koreans looked to the Chinese and the Chinese sat on their hands, they did nothing. And that really created a bet. So the Park Geun-ae, Xi Jinping relationship has not been tested in that way. And so again, for Japan, I think as they look at what Korea is doing with China, these are the two big obstacles or questions that they have to think about. Where does Japan fit in this vision of Northeast Asia and regional cooperation of parks and the degree to which the next provocation by North Korea is going to test the Park Geun-ae, Xi Jinping relationship. Just the final two points I'd make with regard to the data that Kim Il-sung presented was the, I think what's interesting is, I mean there's, he's trying to interesting correlations between the degree of trade dependence and Korea-Japan relations. The alternative variables would be democracy, right? Because you really start to see these issues coming up with democratization in Korea, right? It correlates very well with your data. From 1987, the 90s onwards, you start seeing these issues arise. And then the second point would be that if the argument, Kim Il-sung's argument is correct, the counterfactual would be, so suppose Abe does address the comfortable women issue. Suppose some of these historical issues are addressed, according to your argument then, it would still not lead to an improvement in Korea-Japan relations because your primary variable is trade dependence, right? So I think that's an interesting question for us all the ponder. Do we think that if Japan actually did things to try to address in a straightforward fashion these historical grievances and issues, do we think that would lead to improvement in bilateral relations or when we still continue to have difficult bilateral relations because of Korea's growing trade dependence on Japan? I'm less convinced of the latter, but I think it's certainly debatable. Terrific, terrific. Thanks so much, Victor. Before I wanna give our panelists a chance to respond there and I wanna entertain a couple of questions because I've got a variety of thoughts going through my head right now. Before I ask Dr. Kim and Dr. Moro to respond, let me add a little bit to this. So Victor, you're talking a little bit about this idea of changing in status quo as being a key trigger on the history issues, related issues. So to some extent that would suggest that kind of rise up in this baseline of historical different perceptions that are always there. Part of what Kimura sensei was talking about is almost that stays constant but what is fluctuating is the level of importance or how much each other need each other or the level of importance of each country. So it's almost kind of dipping down beyond below that as a key issue. There could be a bit of both, frankly. Change in status quo could kind of rise the level, the political level of above, importance level of the other country, but that level is always there. A related issue in my mind is, and it comes out in the Cold War example and discussion about that era, and the relationship to the United States. So some have argued that actually paradoxically, the fact that Korea and Japan need each other so much, that all this interdependence that has evolved actually allows them to engage or entertain historical disputes because they know that if it gets to be really bad at a certain point, people are gonna come in and sort things out. So in a way, this interdependence and these relationships with the United States insulates or at least makes some leadership and media perhaps in others feel that they have license or the ability to do this. Others say, actually the opposite, that this interdependence or these strong relationships with the United States actually helped mitigate and reduce the level of conflict on these issues. I wanted to ask the panelists, if you wanted to respond to some of the points that Victor made, but also to respond to this idea about the U.S. role or the Alliance role because in the Cold War versus the 90s, if the Japan-Korea relationship was actually moving in a strong, good direction in the 90s, whether it was 93 in the Kodo Statement and the Moriyama Statement and the Occhi meeting and that trend that we had in the 90s, that would suggest at a time when threats and other things were not necessarily as critical and you could argue they didn't need each other as much than why were things so good then. I'm trying to understand that era in the context of some of these issues about change in status quo or relationship with the United States, sense of threat, et cetera, if you understand what I'm getting at. Does anybody want to take a stab at those relationships? Well, let me, I think that in terms of your first question and comment, Jim, I think it can be a combination of both things. I mean, I think the reason things have gotten as bad as they have is because in the bilateral relationship, their efforts to change the status quo, whether it's the Tokdo visit or Kono Statement, the Kono Statement, there were efforts to change, or intimations to change on both sides and that made the relationship work. And then at the strategic level, I think the basic observation there is that, and for disparate reasons, the Koreans and the Japanese just don't value each other strategically as much as they used to. For Japan, you see it in the white papers and they clearly see the answer being the focus is now on the East China Sea and the South China Sea, and that the primary partner there is the more reinvigorated US-Japan alliance and to the extent that we can get other partners in Southeast Asia and India and others on board, that's the focus. And for Korea, the shift has been away from Japan and towards China as a strategic partner in managing this very difficult and unpredictable North Korea problem. So in many ways, the two are looking away from each other. And for the United States, that's very frustrating because we think that the two really need each other and we treat, in fact, the trilateral relationship as a single strategic unit, as you know well, in our own thinking and planning, both politically and operationally. So in that sense, I think both of those things are happening at the same time. And I think the status quo issue, the bilateral one has been, I think we're coming out of that now. I think hopefully we're coming back. But the big problem going forward, right, as Taehyung mentioned is the strategic picture is still a big problem because Koreans are looking at China and Japan is looking at the South China Sea and neither feel like they need each other as much as they used to. Any comments? Okay. I want to say that sometimes we tend to just focus on the China problems. But now, I think that there is another problem in North Asia, that is Japan problem. Because now Japanese government and the Japanese public opinion have a very strong anti-Chinese, anti-Korean sentiment. It means that we are losing the sense of the place of the directions in the North East Asia. North Asia. We don't know where should we go. So the Abe government policy to try to make a strong network with United States is strongly supported. It means that because we are losing the place in North Asia, so we are trying to go back to Pacific, I think that same kind of thing is also happening in South Korea. South Korea also, also policy makers and scholars of the strategic issue insist that they are putting very much emphasis on the relationship to the United States. But they are living in the situation. They have to care about the very big Chinese influence. They don't know how to do that. They don't know how to do that. Especially Japan has a very strong military power and very equal power. So Japan society has big anxieties. So anyway, this is another big problem in today's world. How you are going to treat all the economic power in North Asia? Like, you can expect the same role as you expect at the time of Cold War to Japan. But you may locate Japan in other new powers like South Korea or Australia or something like that. Frankly speaking, we are not sure about what kind of things you expect or what kind of future picture of the strategy and how you locate Japan in the very broad issues. So that's one of the big problems in North Asia. So I want to say that we are floating in North Asia. And another point that I miss at my presentation is the changing point of the situation. I understand, according to the data of Gigi News, the number of the people who answered that South Korea is important right now started to decrease in 2002. It means that partly it is because we had a World Cup football game at that time. But the other one is it was the starting point of the populistic era in Japan and South Korea. So after the Koizumi government, the Nomiyon government, imagine the situation at the time of Mori government or Kim Dae-jun government. They don't try to touch positively about the historical issues by their own choice. But from Koizumi and Nomiyon, they pick up in case of Koizumi, it was Yasukuni. And in case of the Nomiyon, it was Takeshima Dokuto. The South Korean people might know that you couldn't see any big poster of the Takeshima Dokuto before 2001. But just that's soon after the 2005, many of the pictures, movies, and the piggyback problems that will be brought after it. They found that that kind of issues can be, by doing that, by using that, they can get some kind of political interest. So after that timing, our situation has changed. So, and of course behind that, we are in the very hard situation of the decline of the trust, of the degree of trust or confidence in politics. So now we are in a very, how can I say, unstable situation. That's the things that we have to cover. Victor made a lot of interesting and convincing cases. And I have just two responses. One about the strategic gap among US, Japan and Korea. I think US is a no doubt a global power. So US look at North East Asia in terms of its global strategy, balance with the Syrian case and how to deal with Putin. And the next month is how am I approaching Xi Jinping and Chinese Communist Party in terms of various different things in the world. But Japan and Korea are still I think a regional context they are moving around. Japan worry about East China Sea issue and they pay more attention to South China Sea but relatively Korea pretty much focusing on peninsula issues and China involvement with any Korea related issues. So in other words, Seoul and Tokyo have been competing with each other to get their own exclusive attention from the United States. And paradoxically speaking, US alliance has been functioning too well for the last 70 years. That is why Korea and Japan has been so lazy about their security, strategic approaches to their alliance. My second comment is about Chinese and Japanese and Korean people's discomfort toward their mutual history. Victor mentioned about the status quo and the breakdown of the status quo and its correlation with a practical cooperation. In a broader picture, I agree with that argument. But if you look at the same social phenomenon with a more myoptic angle, there is no static and fixed social phenomenon in the world. It's slowly changing. So from the Korean eyes, Japan has been applying salami tactics. There was no Takeshima day in 20th century. Suddenly it appeared. And then there was no textbook description about their claim on Dokdo before seven years ago. So for Korean eyes, everything is changing but very slowly. So it reinforces Korean people's perception that still Japan is approaching the past history in the same angle. And from the Japanese people, I think Japan has some problem with Korea's inconsistent argument in international realm and also their domestic political procedures. And Japan have witnessed a different ruling from Korea's Supreme Court and local court on forced labor issue, which they believed already has been completed and resolved with Korea in 1965. So many Japanese people reading these issues out of their magazines and news media, they believe that Korea is moving the goalpost. And for the last three years, also these two countries have been scrolling and the moving bringing this issue outside of the North East Asia. So mutual distrust has been deepened. So as Kimura Kan already pointed out, Japan public's rapid shift toward anti-Korean for the last three years is much more challenging issue we have to tackle between the soul and Tokyo from now on. There are a lot of marriages and divorces but this kind of divorce is more often in Japan than in Seoul. Wife don't say any complaint and just diligently serving their children and husband for 40 years and suddenly one day announces a unilateral divorce and asks for claim of budgetary compensation. That's more often in Japanese for Japanese wives. So that kind of phenomenon is happening in Japan right now against Korea. Thank you. So in Korea they're just arguing for the last 20 years. Yeah. That's interesting. And I suppose to finish the thought on the Cold War piece that it jives with Victor's work that he's done in the past. And you could argue even if the threats were decreasing there was also a threat of US disengagement from the region. And in that sense Japan and Korea needed each other more potentially as a hedge against possible abandonment fears. So that could have been a factor all of which in my mind reinforces the idea that in the past the bilateral dynamic was incredibly important. The relationship with the United States and other bilateral relationships. We could be entering an area where the multilateral it's a more complicated picture as Victor and others were alluding to. And how we bring China and Southeast Asia and other countries and institutions into this relationship I think may be something we need to think about going forward because it's not just about bilateral relations are still important but that's not all there is. Democratization of foreign policy issues is another trend in the back of my mind which I won't ask about right now because I want to get to the audience the role of the media globalization technology development. These are all other factors that have evolved over time in the past 50 years that I think we have to think about going forward in the next panel about how they may impact some of these modalities that we've talked about today. But let me open it up to the floor. I saw Jim's hand here first and I want to hear from him and then we'll go around and hear. Please let us know who you are and where you're from. Thanks Jim. Jim Pristup National Defense University. I wanted to build on the observation about efforts to change the status quo leading to these downward spirals. And to ask our panelists to kind of identify what are the domestic political drivers that led to the decisions that to for example to visit Dokdo for example what caused Abe to start considering revisions the Kono and Moriyama statements that what is the political domestic political payoff that overrides longer term security interests that lead to these kind of controversies. So some quick thoughts about domestic drivers of some of these decisions. Japan? Japan and Korea? Korea breathes first. Okay. Three weeks earlier than former president at least visit to Dokdo. Trisomia agreement was on hold suddenly and I resigned and then without me he didn't have any challenger to stop visiting Dokdo. But it was his three year long wish. I heard him saying I need to go there for several times since 2008 which means that he believes Japan is strengthening their description on Dokdo in their textbook and I have been quiet on that issue so far and Japan, I don't know about other issues we are very good but Japan is taking advantage of my position here. That was President Lee's belief. And problem was that a similar timeframe he made some informal lecture in front of high school teachers and then some teacher, Andy of the session, questioned that what do you think about Japanese emperors possible to visit to Korea sometime in the future? And then he answered like a textbook style. We have many, many difficult issues so I welcome him and then I wish he could make some good apology again as an emperor for our bilateral relations but it was build over and became bigger issue and then Japan picked up very sensitive words out of it. That was the beginning of the relationship but that cannot approve this government, Park Geun-hae government argument that everything about this difficult relationship has been inherited from the previous government. I don't agree with that argument because at least for the last two and a half years both governments leadership from our back cabinet and Park Geun-hae regime had a lot of opportunities and chances to fix or turn the direction around. So bad incidents, many things happen and aggravated so always you should carefully engage. What can you do during your five year term presidency and during your prime ministers period? Thank you. I guess we also have to think about this idea that there's changes in the status quo but there's also the challenge of trying to actually move back. There's real political cost to moving back so it's almost like a one way valve. Sometimes things move in that direction it's hard to bring back. Anybody thought on the Japan side? I think that on the Takeshima-Doku issue that we are not necessarily going to the bad directions. As you see that at the time of the Nomihon government Takeshima-Doku was a top issue, top issue of the dispute between two countries but now the South Korean government, the land, they shouldn't pick up the issue so sensationally in two meanings. First, if once they irradiate the Japanese public opinions they cannot take anything from the negotiation with the Japanese and the second one is more simple simply because they are controlling the islands. It is nothing for them to pick up the issues as international disputes. They cannot take anything because they are officially denying there are any disputes on the Takeshima-Doku island. So after the establishment of the PAK government, PAK-KUNE government, I think the PAK-KUNE government understands that and try to tone down the insistence or maintenance on the Takeshima-Doku island. And on the Japanese situation, I think that the Japanese situation is more complicated because originally the Takeshima-Doku issue was started by the establishment of the Day of Takeshima which was done by the Shimane-Perfectural government. It means that it started from some kind of civil society or local government and it's not just directly controlled by the central government. Of course, there are so many politicians who are supporting such kind of activities but I don't think that even today that the Takeshima-Doku is never a top issue for the Japanese government because we have more serious Senkaku. Comparing with Senkaku, it is nonsense for us to make use energy to the Takeshima-Doku. So in that meaning that on that kind of thing, we are going to gradually control the Takeshima-Doku and because we learned something. We learned something. I have Chris and then I have a gentleman behind him. Just speak. We got a microphone coming. And then we'll work our way back here. We'll try to keep our questions and comments short. Thanks a lot. Chris Nelson, the Nelson Report. I want to follow on Jim's question. This notion of the real risk point is status quo changing, whether it's going up or down. As a media commentator, I believe it was the opening phrase by your chairman, I'm on the receiving end of a lot of stuff, as you might imagine. And in the last month or two, I've been on the receiving end of a steady drumbeat from Japanese diet men and other people accompanied by Yamashou helpers, not implying agreement, in full view of the government, of blatantly anti-Korean positions and arguments, wanting me to really write criticism of Park, her visit to China, et cetera, et cetera, onto the night. And in particular, I was handed by a senior diet man, I guess a week ago, this Sanke Shimbom quotes history book that's an embarrassment to the Japanese people. And this book by a Korean woman, again, very difficult stuff, but handed to me, here's the real story. You need to write about this. And in asking around, these are being mailed out to people all over, perhaps all over the US, but certainly over DC. Are we seeing something here that is really what I'll be and the kind I really wants to happen? Or am I just, because I'm not hearing anything to counter it. I'm not hearing anything from something to say, well, you know, normal sensible Japanese people know this stuff as an embarrassment. Nobody's making that case to me. I'm just getting this extreme revisionist stuff as what I'm really supposed to be writing about. And it's quite disturbing because I think that if that's really where they're coming from in the Kantei these days, and we're obviously really coming from, then that is a real status quo mover. And by that model, we need to really be worried about it. So the question is... That's my question, is it? Am I just hearing from the right wings or is this what's really starting to come out now because of this anxiety about the Korea-China relationship? Does anyone have a thought about that? My impression just quickly is, as what's alluded to on the panel, one of the recent developments is the fact that this, these historical issues or this consistent phenomenon between Japan and Korea is multiplying where it's becoming more outwardly directed by both involving the United States but other capitals as well and in the region. And China has its own role in this public diplomacy engagement. So I don't see anything to suggest to me that the cabinet has any kind of role in this or I mean, I think it's hard for them necessarily to take a position on it one way or the other. Frankly, I'd rather encourage the deep politicization, which means not having diplomats and others going around trying to either correct this or reflect that. But so to me, the absence of criticism of that activity doesn't frighten me too much, but I don't know. There are a couple of points. The first is, I'm not really sure how much of a domestic political bump these leaders get from being nationalistic on these history issues. I mean, maybe Kim Jong-un got a little bump after he visited Tokyo Takeshima, but it's certainly not like the bump Pakenne got after she stood down the North Koreans over the DMZ loud speaker crisis, right? If you wanna get a bump, that's where you can get a bump. But I think on the domestic politics angle, I think what we're seeing more, and this is also to Chris's, what we're seeing more of is the role that these grassroots and individual organizations can play in affecting the relationship, right? And increasingly, something that I really don't like seeing is that the United States is now becoming the battleground, whether it's the expat, or the Korean Americans doing these monuments, or the Japanese trying to place ads in the Washington Post, or someone trying to feed you information, US is kind of becoming the battleground for this, and I don't think that's a good thing. It's not a good thing for either country. It's not good for US policy either. Yeah, absolutely. Anyway, we have a very bad expectation to the US government, the US public opinions, like that US might say yes to the other side or something like that if we can make an effort. So in that meaning that the American people or American government have to say, you are not touching to the such kind of which is called the territorial disputes, and that you are going to take a neutral position. Otherwise, we expect some public opinion, public opinions or position expect. We may be able to move US public opinion or the US policy maker to help, to assist other side of the historical understanding. So I think that we need the US understanding, US official standards more clearly about the historical dispute between Japan and South Korea. Well, it shows to me that we need a counter, a civil society counter to this, not necessarily a government counter to these different opinions, but I have a gentleman here and then we'll move on. Thank you. I'm a popular visiting scholar from the size of the Johns Hopkins. I have a quick question for Professor Kimura. According to Professor Kim's idea about with the Korean's attitude toward Japan is quite stable due to the historical dispute. According to your presentation, you mentioned about in the recent three years the percentage of dislike from Korea to Japan dramatically increased. Yes. And you didn't mention about the reason. According to my understanding about your presentation, it is not because the Korean itself, it is because of, it is due to the rising of China. That is in Japan's mind, Korean should be on Japan's side viewing China as a threat instead of establishing a closer relationship with China. Yeah, so in my understanding, it is just Japan is mad about the Korean's response to China. Is my understanding correct? Okay, thank you. That's my question. As for the dispute between Japan and South Korea, as Professor Cha also mentioned, there are two or three elements which affected the situation in the 1990s. First one is of the decline of the Japanese economy after the heyday of the Japanese economy. This is the first. And the second one is the democratization and the starting of the civil society movement of the big teams at the time of colonial rule. In the end of 1970s, 1970s, it was very tough for the South Korean people to have that kind of movement even against Japan. Because until 1991, even about conforming the issue, South Korea government had official and official stance that it was sold by the 1965 treaty. 1965 treaty. But because of the booming of the civil society movement, after that, South Korean government officially changed their understanding. First, on the conforming issue in 1991, and they go back to the 1990s and again, they deny the solution of the conforming issue by the 1965 treaty. So we have that kind of process. And so one of the things is that if we see that kind of situation in 1990, in micro level, almost all of the movement started from South Korea. South Korea. So the situation should be explained in the context of the South Korean society or Japan-South Korean relations. And about China, well, I don't know, I'm sorry. But today, I know that the Chinese movement of the big teams at the time of the World War II are influenced by the South Korean movement and they are assisted by some kind of South Korean activists. So in that meaning that something starting from South Korea has some kind of impact to the Chinese situation. And also the South Korean activists' experience about how to use the court or how to use the international public opinions or even how to use the U.S. courts was used for the kind of the activity in China and they share that. And also, of course, the decline of Japan in Chinese economy is very important. Imagine the situation after the Tiananmu incident. After the early 1990s, Japan was a very important country for China. But at the time, the Chinese government tried to control the situation. But now, they don't need to do that kind of situation. I would say that one of the things we have to appreciate in thinking about this when it comes to China is that just structurally, Korea has a much more nuanced view of China than Japan does, right? I mean, for Japan, China will always be a peer competitor of Japan. Always, right? That's the way it's been historically. That's the way it'll be in the future, right? And, but for Korea, it's always about this managing the North Korea problem, right? It's the trade dependence issue and it's managing the North Korea problem. So it's always gonna be a more nuanced relationship. Now, this is not to say, I don't think, this does not necessarily mean Korea's just gonna fall into China's orbit. Because there are many tests of that relationship down the road, the most proximate of one of which will be the next North Korean provocation. That will really test the Korea-China relationship. And then, and I do think values matter. I mean, I think, you know, the bottom line is that Korea and Japan are the two prominent market democracies in Asia and two of the more prominent market democracies in the world. And so that matters, right? I think that matters in the relationship. I'm reminded of a conversation I had with a very senior South Korean official over dinner one night who negotiates with China, negotiated trade stuff with China. And he said that, you know, when you have a negotiate, when we have a negotiation with the United States, we negotiate on the basis of logic and reasoning. And if I can make my point clearly and show that it makes the most sense, eventually I can get my American counterpart to say, all right, well, maybe that's right. But he says, with China, doesn't matter, right? You can say why your position is logically right. This, that, and the other thing has no effect, right? And so that's about values, I think. And I think, you know, we underestimate the role that can play in the Japan-Korea relationship, US-Korea-Korea relationship. Well, thank you very much. Unfortunately, we've run out of time. I know we have a lot more questions here, but we do have a little bit of a break between now and the next session. So there's a chance maybe you can engage with some of the panelists directly. There is, I hope we've taken a little bit of the journey toward this gaining of insight in terms of trying to make more informed, accurate assumptions about the future. There are some constants, but I think there are also some very dynamic changing factors in the relationship as well. Please join me in thanking our presenters and discuss with them. Thank you very much.