 Good morning, everyone. Welcome to CSIS. My name is Victor Chaw. I am the senior advisor and career chair here at CSIS and professor at Georgetown University. And we're very happy to see all of you here today. We're very happy to be hosting this with the Global Peace Foundation, and I'll introduce Mike Marshall in a minute to offer some welcoming remarks as well. I think the timing of this particular panel is exquisite, and of course we planned it that way. Actually, we, in a series of gatherings we've been doing with GPF, the one that we had not done yet was Japan, and that was our topic of discussion for today. It just so happened that the event was scheduled at a time where there seems to be a lot of interesting things happening in the Japan-Korea relationship if you've been following the news lately as lately as this morning. There seem to be a lot of interesting things happening. So we'll talk about those things as well as take a broader historical perspective, perhaps going all the way back to 600. What was it, 600? 662. But before we do that, I want to give an opportunity to my co-host, Mike Marshall from the Global Peace Foundation, to say a few words of welcome. So thank you very much, Victor. As he said, I'm Michael Marshall. I'm the Director of Research for the Global Peace Foundation, and I'd like to welcome you all here on behalf of the Foundation. This is the fifth and last of a series of forums that we've put on together with CSIS in the course of this year, looking at trying to take different approaches or open up new perspectives on the issue of Korean unification. So as this is the final one, I'd particularly like to thank CSIS, Victor and his team for all the work they've done in making these possible and putting them together. The Global Peace Foundation is a nonprofit organization that operates internationally. We explore and promote innovative values-based approaches to conflict resolution, peace building, community development, and national transformation. We're active in about 16 countries and have a particularly active Korean chapter that is currently very strongly focused on the issue of Korean unification, in two respects particularly. One respect is that we believe it's very important to get the Korean public as well as broader global public opinion really educated and supportive of the issue of unification, and I've undertaken a number of projects in that area. In particular, here in the Washington area on August the 15th, we're partnering with the One Korea Foundation, and I'd like to recognize Professor Jay Ryu, who's the President of that organization is here with us today, Professor Ryu. We're putting on an event at the Lincoln Memorial, which commemorates the 70th anniversary of the end of the war, Second World War, which was also the 70th anniversary of the beginning of the division of Korea, with the theme that 70 years is long enough, and it's time to start thinking about how the separation can be bridged. The other area is really putting forward as a framework for thinking about how do you rebuild bonds between the separated people, the idea of Korea's long cultural heritage and history, and the principles that have animated it as a framework that can bridge the political and ideological divides that have existed over the past 70 years. Broadly, I think we're trying to get people to think in terms of looking forward to what is possible in the future, rather than back to what happened in the past, although obviously those things can't be avoided. Looking to the future, we're very much trying to promote an approach that involves thinking about the Northeast Asia region as a whole, about what it would take to develop a new security structure that would involve the U.S. and its regional allies, Japan and Korea, but also China and Russia, as a framework for moving possibly North Korea from its current situation. In that context, of course, the Japan-Korea relationship is incredibly important, and I hope today we're going to get some really helpful and insightful ideas on that. We very much believe that the relationship and certainly America's interests and the relationship between Japan and Korea will be much benefited if there was less looking backwards and fretting over issues from the past, although those are serious and highly emotional issues, and looking forward to the future possibilities of the region, which will require, if there to be beneficial possibilities, close cooperation between Japan and Korea. Thank you very much. Thank you, Mike. Thank you, Mike. It has been a pleasure to partner with GPF on this series, and we're very grateful for that. Let me introduce to you our panelists or our commentators, if you will, starting with my immediate left. Michael Oslin is a president, scholar, and director of Japan Studies at the American Enterprise Institute, right down here across the street. He was previously an associate professor and senior research fellow at the McMillan Center for International Area Studies at Yale University. All of these people have very distinguished bios you have there in your programs. Let me just introduce them briefly for the benefit of the cameras. Sitting next to Michael or Misha is Jim Schoff. He is senior associate in the Asia program of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. He previously served as senior advisor for East Asia policy at the Defense Department in the office of the Secretary of Defense. And sitting next to Jim is Sheila Smith. Sheila is a senior fellow for Japan Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. Prior to that, she was with the East West Center in Hawaii, and she just had a new book published, Juman Domestic Politics and a Rising China published by Columbia University Press. So we're actually going to dispense with set pieces in the beginning. We're just going to have a conversation about issues in the Japan-Korea relationship. I should just say by way of beginning the discussion that when we first announced this panel, I got a lot of complaints from my Korean friends saying that you have a bunch of Japan people on the panel and there's no Korea representation. And they were saying it's not fair. It's three against one. But I show you the reason we chose these folks is not because we see them as die-hard Japan experts that only tout one line, but as really objective surveyors of the relationship here in Washington, DC, important people who lead opinion on the issues. And we thought it'd be nice to have a conversation with them. So to begin, I want to start with something very specific, which is this whole question of the UNESCO World Heritage Sites and what appeared to be a compromise that was reached between the Japanese and the Koreans with regard to the listing of these sites. But then there were pieces in the newspaper this morning saying that what they thought was an agreement now has spun out again into some sort of problem. And I guess the first question to you all is how significant do you think it was that they reached some sort of agreement? And are we really having another problem or is this just the press apologies to the press? But is this just the press looking to continue a story about how US allies are continually in conflict with one another? So, Misha? Let me, first of all, thank you, Victor for organizing this and to GPF and for all of you to coming. It's great to walk across the street and be engaged in a conversation about things that we care about. But we also know are really important, which is really hard sometimes in this city when everyone's focused on the Middle East and focused on Eastern Europe. Things are afoot in Asia, some good, some bad. And so I think having this opportunity is really important. There should be something that is actually really good that we should be talking about the 50th anniversary of normalization. And unfortunately, we're here largely because things are not good and certainly not where where we would like to see it. And most of our friends in Korea and Japan would like to see it. And that I think is the dynamic that I would just consider the most worrisome. It's I'll leave the specifics of this to my colleagues who are better versed in following it. But this dynamic of first of all, from a policy level, appearing to achieve agreement on something that's really shouldn't even be of note, right? This should be the lowest of low hanging fruit. It should be a no brainer. It should just be happening. But the fact that it is blown up into the main story indicates the parlous state of relations that that's the dynamic that I think we need to to recognize is that we're spending time talking about things that for the most part shouldn't even be really remarked upon. And so it shows how much farther we have to go. The second part of that dynamic, I would say is that you've seen this before on things that were a little bit more concrete, for example, the initially aborted attempt to have an information, a military information sharing agreement between the two countries and agreement that at the last minute was scuppered. So you have this dynamic where there are intense efforts and good faith efforts on both sides to move the relationship forward to address needs, whether they're policy related or maybe on things like culture, which can help bring greater understanding. But the bedrock of relations remain so so poor that you can't even get those through that you go through this dynamic of agreement followed by recrimination followed by breakdown and whether or not that'll happen. We'll see, but certainly the fact that you can't break out of it, I think, is what worries me the most. Well, thank you, Victor, for the opportunity to be here today. Specific to the UNESCO question you ask, it's really a perfect example of the overarching problem that we face, I think. My understanding is in the near term problem is essentially it's rooted in how each country views the colonial experience, which Japan sees as in its time and context was legitimate and Japan and Korea does not. And there's a vast gap between the two countries in terms of their understanding of what happened during that period. But because Japan sees it as legitimate, that cuts to an agreement that they had signed, I think, in 1930, which prohibited forced labor. So Japan does not want to use the term forced labor, because that could have implications for court cases that are taking place in Korea now against Japanese companies, which was kind of opened the door by the Supreme Court in 2012. So Japan was willing to say they recognize what happened that Koreans were brought there against their will and forced to work. You could say, well, that's forced labor. But the definition to the Japanese government, at least, is important because there's an exception in the forced labor provision back in 1930 that during times of emergency or such, you can mobilize your populations to do certain things. And Japan considered Koreans to be their population because of the colonial experience. So it's all rooted back in this challenge of the colonial experience. And it bubbles up into mincing words and trying to get countries to, in particular, to get Japan to kind of admit to certain things that when they don't, it frustrates the Korean side immensely. In my mind, this is a perfect example of where Korea has gained the potential to permanently enshrine in these UNESCO sites education about what happened so that when visiting Japanese come in the future to these sites that are going to be restored, hopefully with in the next couple of decades, they will gain some knowledge and learn an understanding about about what happened that they would otherwise not have before. So that's to me, that's the real benefit and opportunity here rather than quibbling about exactly what words. Hopefully this will die down in the next couple of weeks or even the next couple of days and people will will seize on that positive aspect. That doesn't solve the bigger issues that are still out there, comfort women and some other issues. But but this should be able to to be a win, a hope in the near future. Thank you, Victor, also for inviting me to join the conversation. I'm all about the previous two speakers said are important pieces of the puzzle. I think the UNESCO piece for me was emblematic of two things I think we're seeing. One is that the South Korean and Japanese governments are having a hard time sustaining even small pieces of agreement that they can manage to forge. And I saw the UNESCO conversation as largely an effort by both governments to find some middle ground. And we've I think over the last six to nine months or so watched Tokyo and Seoul really try to get to that place, if not the final solution or a comprehensive solution, at least edge themselves a little bit closer to finding a way forward for the two countries. The domestic politics side of this I think is one of the pieces that we don't talk about in Washington very often. So clearly this question of war memory and war legacy, especially between Japan and South Korea, but also involving China, has become deeply embedded in domestic politics in all of these countries. So for the on the Korean side, it is part of a very complex process of democratization. The advocacy that you hear today in Korean politics on some of these issues are people whose voices were not heard in 1965 when the bilateral treaty was negotiated. So you have also this component to the South Korean politics, I think it's very important to understand and contextualize. On the Japanese side, I think you see this flare up of tension with Seoul, the diplomatic estrangement is the word I like to use, but is really now flavoring the domestic politics in Japan. You see a much more visceral expression of conservative backlash on the issue of cooperation with Seoul than you've ever seen, I've ever seen in Japan in the past. It was at always there, perhaps in marginal voices, but not in the mainstream. You'd never really see the kind of debate in Japan about the relationship with South Korea that you see today. But the second thing I think that the UNESCO thing brings up is that both Japan and South Korea are going to the UN to talk about the narrative that both Misha and Jim presented. Who has the right narrative on the 20th century? Who has the right language for what actually happened? And I think the UN has become a place of contestation, whether it's UNESCO and sites, or a month or so ago there was a conversation on nonproliferation about whether Hiroshima and Nagasaki should be the sites of again similar education about the atomic bombings and the consequences of it. China opposed that, saying that Japan didn't have the right to play the victim. So you're seeing the United Nations become a place where the countries of Northeast Asia now are debating the language, the narratives of their war memory. And I think it's something that we, I don't know, we have a cure for it. I'm not sure it could be bilaterally negotiated just between Seoul and Tokyo, but I think it's worrisome. And it's something I think we should pay attention to in terms of how do we reverse the trend? How do we find common cause perhaps in the education over the past, via the UN or in other venues where we can enlighten on the 20th century history without necessarily provoking one narrative over the other. But again, this is something for the governments of Seoul and Tokyo is very hard to negotiate just by themselves. Let me just pick up on the point that Sheila made about domestic politics. I mean, it almost seems, I mean, if you look at this UNESCO thing, not to harp on it too long, but you look at this UNESCO thing and it's almost like Japan-Korea relations has become the instrument to play gacha with both the South Korean and with the Japanese governments because it looks like the bureaucrats reached a compromise. Jim said they found a middle ground and, you know, it was a middle ground that was not easy to find given the fact that the Japanese government doesn't want to use a term for slavery. They came up with a different formulation and immediately the first thing that people do is go after what they see as a vulnerability and agreement and then try to almost undercut, you know, the compromise that had been reached. And so it's almost a game of gacha on both sides now to try to undermine what appear like good faith efforts by both governments to try to reach solutions. But I want to pick up on the point you made about the feeling that is different in Japan. I mean, as everybody here knows, everybody in the audience knows this relationship between Japan and Korea has always been a rather stormy one with ups and downs all the time. And there's, I mean, to an extent, there's been a consistency on the Korean side in the sense that the patterns are almost predictable, right? When there's a textbook revision, you expect some sort of response on the Korean side. When there's Takashima Day, you expect a response on the Korean side where there's a statement by, you know, a politician, you would expect a response. But it ebbs and flows, right? It nothing is ever resolved, but eventually it moves back to some form of pragmatic cooperation. What's interesting to me on the Japan side is the shift that has taken place on the domestic side in terms of not just marginal, but mainstream views on Korea, the so-called Korea fatigue, even of folks who are very, who have always been very pro in Korea. So one, I think it's pretty deep. But I guess from you guys, I mean, a sense of how do we get out of that? I mean, what causes change? You know, what is going to cause change in that respect? Well, I can start to try and answer. I think it's a complicated one. When I hear people talk, when people start to talk to me, whether it's conservative politicians or journalists, lots of journalists want to talk about the Japan-Korea relationship, not just the journalists here, but journalists in Tokyo as well. Or just friends, you know, that I go to their house and have dinner. Korea now is a very evocative conversation in ways it never used to be. So you, the word that comes off, it's very, we often talk about this dynamic between Seoul and Tokyo as being, as the Koreans being very emotional, right? Well, I think you could use that label to talk about the Japanese at the moment. I think the emotions are running high. And it's not, I think we, sometimes we paint it as a conservative liberal difference, but I think that it's not. It's something different. And I think it's tapping a little bit into what I see as a broader anxiety in Japan about geostrategic change. I mean, that's a big word, but really about Japan's isolation in the region. And there's a particular feeling, I think, of, and again, the word betrayal comes up a lot among Japanese friends, that the real relationship between Seoul and Tokyo, even though it's had its ups and downs, has had a lot of effort at reconciliation, has had a lot of goodwill at the popular level, at the business level that in fact, despite these differences over war legacy and war memory, that it has been a particularly close relationship, right? So I think there's that. There's a certain amount of, and I know I'm anthropomorphizing state-to-state relations, so forgive me for doing it, but there's this kind of hurt attached to it. And you hear that language when people talk about it. When you talk about, when you talk to diplomats, and I think Jim used this language, when they talk to diplomats about the technical issues of the relationship, you get into the more legalistic, the treaty says this, we can't say that. But I do think the popular side of the expression of concern about not just President Puck, but about the issues that royal the relationship. I don't know how that gets fixed. And I think that will take a lot more than just government-to-government interaction. I think it's going to take an awful lot of civil society interaction as well. So I think the relationship needs leadership absolutely from the political leaders, but I think it also needs leadership from outside, from educators, from civil society leaders who have a stake in the relationship. Because I think there's a deep sense of loss of trust, not just over the thorny issues of the Shimane or Takishima or Dokdo, right? Not over, even over the comfort women, I think there's this bigger question about who are we to each other and how are we going to see our future together? Or even are we going to see it together? So I think there's a lot of work here that goes beyond these kind of a third rail issues of war memory that really speaks to what kind of partnership Japan and South Korea are going to have in the future. Yeah, I was kind of spoiled when I was in the Defense Department from 2010 to 2012 working on U.S. Japan-Korea trilateral cooperation and in the aftermath of the Chonan attack and Yongpyeongdo and China's reaction to all of that, there was a great sense of cooperation certainly among the defense communities in all three countries. And in part because of that very positive experience. And I think generally speaking the defense communities tend to see the benefits of their cooperation and see common cause even in rough times. They just have to kind of keep the public profile of it low when things are politically difficult and they can do it perhaps in a more overt way when things are good. But I left the Defense Department. I started my first event. I was asked about this deterioration of Japan-Korea relations and the aftermath of the Chosomia collapse and President Lee going to Dokdo. And I was optimistic about the ability to kind of this is cyclical. We're going to be able to kind of get back on track. We'll get new leaders in Japan and Korea. And I was completely wrong. And it was very humbling because I underestimated the power and influence of the mobilized population in both countries. And it's certainly larger in Korea than it is in Japan. But it's significant enough in Japan that when comments are made it annoys the Korean so much that when there was a parent when Prime Minister Noda and President Lee were getting close to some kind of agreement on Comfort Women, the Korean side as I understand it really wanted a guarantee from the Japanese side that you're not going to undermine this with side comments by different ex-politicians. And they couldn't offer that guarantee and the whole thing collapse. So and I think as Sheila alluded to it goes beyond the shared historical perceptions. If you look at polling data it shows pretty deep suspicion in well there's actually kind of zero sum economic thinking in both countries. Both countries tend to say if the other country's doing well then that's not good for us. There's definitely this security bill revision and revival in Japan is creating other suspicions in Korea. So I think those divisions are quite deep and you have these motivated populations. To me I just keep coming back to this issue of long term education as knowledge as power not necessarily trying to score points but anything you can do to enhance broader education. But then the leadership piece becomes key to carve out areas of common strategic interest and getting the public and the populations to understand OK we have our differences and we're not giving up our points on these different battles that we have. But when it comes to North Korean nuclear development when it comes to certain regional trade and financial dealing with the financial crisis health issues. How do we deal with the AIB. What do we do about Russia. That you get the populations used to the idea that that's normal that's OK. It's OK to do that. That doesn't sacrifice our broader identity. And that's a long process of getting the public used to that. Victor I think here's where you're going to get beat up because it's sort of we're talking a lot about Japan and it's devolving into a Japan thing. Let me let me take a slightly different tack and disagree a little bit with Sheila because agreement's boring. So we'll get a little bit of disagreement here. Sheila mentioned and I think rightly that this is becoming a very emotional anthropomorphized. I think you said you've anthropomorphized it. It's an emotional issue in both countries certainly and now in Japan. And if I'm correct you referenced it to Japan's sense of isolation and frustration and this feeds into larger issues of geostrategic change. And I would agree with the geostrategic change issue. I'd flip it on its head though and what worries me the most is that I actually think what we're seeing is the beginning of events bypassing the Japan-Korea relationship. Now given the geographical or pink witty these two are always going to be very close together in terms of their thought processes given the history. It's something obviously we're talking about today. It's going to continue. But in the broader geostrategic perspective I think that Korea is becoming a smaller part of Japanese strategy and it is doing so because of what Prime Minister Abe is trying to do regionally and much more broadly. You know if you look and you step back and you look at all the different pieces and we don't know how successful they'll be. But if you grant what Abe is trying to do and you look at all the different pieces that he's trying to put together Southeast Asia Australia India relations with the United States at a different level he is again don't know if it'll be successful trying to reshape certainly Japan's position in Asia and to a not inconsider in significant degree the power relations within Asia to the degree that Korea wants to not be part of this step aside continue to keep these other issues at the forefront. I think Tokyo is it's not an issue anymore of soul fatigue. I think it's becoming an issue of Korea passing. Remember the old term Japan passing a little while ago. I think it's becoming Korea passing. I think Tokyo is increasingly comfortable saying look we're going to do everything we can to figure these things out we have to it's it's all sorts of reasons that we've talked about here but there is a bigger game that Japan is playing and that Abe is trying to play. If Korea does not want to be a part of that I think Tokyo is going to be more comfortable saying fine. We're not the ones who are isolated. You are isolated. If you want to turn towards Beijing that's great because we're spreading out three hundred and sixty degrees. That's actually what really worries me about this and therefore to the degree that Abe's successful in this plan then Korea will become correspondingly less important to Japan's overall strategic policy. But is Korea doing the same thing. These are the Japan do you think. Yeah I mean I think so not to not to the same. Of course Korea is free trade agreement. I think Korea is strengthening relations. I think they're both doing that. I mean I think so I agree with you that part of it is emotive right. That you know that but part of it is as Mr. says it is strategic on both sides and on the Korea side it is you know you have a president in South Korea who famously has or at least her supporters of famously said she's you know the first leader in Korea that can have relations good relations with both the United States and China at the same time. And in fact a big part of the Park administration's foreign policy has been to improve the nature and quality of the relationship with China largely because you know and again I don't think it's because of Japan I think it's largely because they see space in the China North Korea relationship and they're working very hard to you know Xi Jinping has not met with the North Korean leader. He's met with the South Korean leader I don't know seven or eight times. So I think they receive a real opportunity to try to pull them away. And so I think in both cases they're the Balsal and Tokyo are looking in different directions right now. Yeah just just to follow up with Jim though and I think certainly this was I see what you were saying Jim more with President Lee than President Park and I don't disagree with what you're saying but I think in terms of a much broader if you looked at what Lee was trying to do in global Korea and stepping up in ways that really brought it a lot of different maneuvering room in Asia. I actually see President Park narrowing her move maneuvering room. She's making it a bipolarity basically. Japan's off to the side forget about Japan. It's U.S. or Beijing maybe trying to have relations with both but I would argue more narrow than Lee and I can be wrong in this. And so I think they've traded. I think back when Lee was doing it Japan was incredibly inwardly focused because of domestic politics because of the failures of the DPJ the collapse of the LDP. Now you've got Abe with what I think is actually a fairly coherent large program and even if Korea is doing it and that may well be may be the case. I'm just trying to express what I think is Tokyo's view that they're willing to say look we'll do what we can but there's a bigger game we're playing at and that worries me because I think that's not optimal. I mean I think in Lee's case I mean certainly towards the end of his presidency he did things that were not good for the relationship but for the most part I mean that he you know his monarchy was global Korea but I mean Japan was a very big part of that and he was strong he was very much in favor of that. Let me so I promise we'll look to the future we're not going to look to the past forever but let me go back to 662. Well actually that's where I was going to take you. It's a certain admiral we should talk about. How did I mean so as Jim said you know when he was at DOD and these things started happening you know there was and I think with many who watched if there was certainly concerned about the state of the relations but you know knowing the history of the relationship and you know there are folks who are in the audience who have been a part of this really trilaterally you know Jim Gregson and others Mark Tocalo who have been a part of this relationship for a long time I think there were sort of the view that you know well it's a bad period but it will you know it will come around eventually. I don't think anybody expected it would go on for this law and so why like how did this start where do you think this started and why has it gone on for so long? Jim? I'll take a quick stab and here's where the lack of Korean expertise may hurt you but it seems to me we used to plan our trilateral events kind of around this this ebb and flow of the calendar because you knew in the spring when the textbooks would come out and you knew when the defense white paper came out and different things and the constitutional court decision in 2011 on Comfort Women was a big issue in my mind because that put a straight line there was no more this sign cosign wave it was you know you've got to do more to solve this issue and in Korea and then in 2012 you have the Supreme Court decision on forced labor and that kind of kept the pace of this consistent now why did those come about? the mobilized population was a part of that but there was always a mobilized population I have to to put it on essentially Korea's evolution Korea's growth Korea's maturity maturation and a a sense that the deal that was struck in 1965 was not good enough and you know we've kind of put up with Koizumi went to Yasukuni Shrine every year and he still then a couple months later would visit Seoul and meet with the president etc and there was a sense that they kind of maybe they had to do that or they weren't strong enough to be able to to stand up so that's my quick armchair analysis is that it has to do with some of this Geostrict political change in the region and and it's almost a natural tendency I mean I think the Japanese do it too in the context of the war crimes tribunal and World War two and they well that was a deal we struck back then but we're not really happy with saying yes to all these things that you determined and you know but the American reaction is you know tough you can't agree to something at one point and say years later that you know that wasn't quite the deal I wanted I want to kind of renegotiate that but it's obviously more complex than that and to what extent it has to do with domestic politics in Korea and societal change you might be in a better position to analyze that than I am What about you guys? It's interesting to me that often we hear from especially from Japanese but I think from both sides you often hear about the Kim Iwuchi moment in 1998 as the sort of pinnacle and that was expected to be the baseline for this new Korea very positive new Korea-Japan relationship so I think you know rather than where it starts it's the cosine the sine cosine kind of waving that we've got to recognize I'm not sure we can get at causality at any given moment but I I do think that I remember being in Japan in 1998 when Kim Dae-joon came and Kim Dae-joon as we all know was incredibly eloquent and so when he spoke in Japan it was very hard I think for most Japanese to not not feel very positive but what he said was the 20th century was a blip on the screen in terms of the Korean-Japanese history that they should go back to this larger relationship and a more positive relationship there's not been a Korean leader since that I think who has articulated that view of the Japan-career relationship you know and you can correct me Victor if you think I'm wrong as close as Yumi and Bak seem to be to his experience in Osaka and his willingness to have support for the at least the business side of the bilateral Japan-career relationship he didn't speak of it in those terms right I say we haven't talked about Nomohyun's time in power and clearly Nomohyun's time had a lot to do with the kind of ideational focus on Dokdo right and the Island dispute and on the the behavior of other Koreans collaborationist you know kinds of ideology and ideas inside South Korea so there's an the embeddedness of the issue in South Korea seems to me to date a little bit from that period but I'm certainly willing to be be corrected on that on the Japanese side I think you do get I don't know that the LDP-DPJ difference really matters in Korea I'd say it matters slightly more in the China relationship for Japan largely because of the 2010 trawler incident but you don't get a lot of difference between LDP and DPJ on the Korea issue you certainly by the time the DPJ came into power in 2009 they were completely lined up with the LDP on North Korea which was another basis for cooperation with Seoul so you got a little bit of DPJ wanting reconciliation diplomacy they were coming up on the 100-year anniversary of colonization when they were in power but I don't see a whole lot of domestic political party difference on the relationship on the Japanese side so I'll come back to the popular side because I think some of this is where I would if I had to sort of focus a moment it was really 2012 you have the email buck visit right you had the Senkaku Diaryu you had the escalation of incidents and popular antagonisms and then I think you had a political people who are normally in the background of that relationship trying to sort the relationship really not proactive really backing up and I think it's different on both sides but I think if we want to look to the future I think there does need to be an articulation of common purpose now it doesn't necessarily have to echo Kim Dae-joon Obuchi, Prime Minister Obuchi's grand vision but it needs to be something like that and I think that's probably where the political leaders on both sides are grappling and I suspect you're right that both sides see lots of political room somewhere else they've got all kinds of other relationships and opportunities to pursue but the bottom line is I don't think they can allow the estrangement to go on much longer because it sows the seeds domestically that are going to make it very hard for the government to rein back in, right? So I think we're seeing some of the consequences actually of the lack of engagement and constructive leadership on this relationship and we're seeing them both countries in different ways but you're going to need real serious political leadership not just strategic vision but real serious political leadership at home on both sides to make a new vision and to sell it domestically on both sides. Just a few thoughts because I'm waiting I'm waiting for the right moment although it's interesting and first of all Sheila referenced Kim Dae-Jung's comment about the larger relationship and you could say well that it was an incredibly positive approach it also provided the fodder for more historical recrimination and grievances because of things that had happened in the past such as 662 and the Hideyoshi invasion and the like so it's not that just opening up the perspective is a panacea but certainly that's the type of leadership that you want is to say look we have to take a broader perspective we've been talking a lot about the specifics and I think and those are right one quick side comment is that for every time that we mention the difficulties that Japan and Korea have in celebrating historical anniversaries like they're obviously not the only ones we still have not figured out between Japan and the United States how to deal with Hiroshima and Nagasaki and that's coming up in a big way in the coming years and there's always different ideas floated when the British celebrated the 200th anniversary of the battle of Trafalgar they didn't mention the French you know which raises a different set of issues about how you remember or misremember history and in fact when we celebrated somebody helped me with the dates I think it was the 70th anniversary because we're in 70s now right 70th anniversary of Midway the official comments by Commander of Paycom and US officials didn't mention Japan so everyone struggles with figuring out exactly how you deal with these these difficult period remembering difficult periods in history this is perhaps an extreme case of it I guess I would just offer that is as we do think about it and everything that my colleague said I certainly agree with I would say though that there it may be worth looking more at some of the systemic or structural elements as well and just from a sort of rational choice perspective so to speak I'm probably not using it correctly but you know the issue is where does Tokyo and Seoul see their self-interest line and we've talked about this in some ways and reaching out to other partners but the bottom line conclusion is that there appears to both of them to be no reason to make the relationship better they have not yet reached a point where they feel they need to make the relationship better is that because of the solidity with the U.S. alliance is it because China is playing sophisticated enough role that reaches out to both and potentially favoring one over another is it because there is no existential or immediate threat I don't know it may be worth looking into but I do think that the specifics are crucial as a historian I'd never want to get rid of specifics but I do think there are probably some systemic elements that we should be looking at that simply lead us to conclude that the two sides do not feel the need to make this relationship better and so whether you want to look at what grassroots can do whether you want to look at better leadership all of that is important but it is a how do my political scientist friends put it it's a necessary yet not sufficient condition for solving this problem and that's as far as I'll go into political science so so let I want to take us to the future but let me just say on this I think that to me at least one of the things that was different this time was that sparked this period of really difficult relations were on both sides efforts either intentionally or unintentionally to change the status quo I mean whether it was a South Korean head of state visiting Tokyo for the first time or it was intimations early in the Abe administration of reinterpreting Kono or Muriyama I mean whenever people start moving up to that edge and moving out of the what did you call it the sign cosign and actually trying to affect changes in the status quo that's why I think when things really start to spin up and we saw a lot of that I think over this over this past period and part of it is reacting to the other side you know whether it's you know the resolution that came out of the diet in response to President Lee's visit to Tokyo I mean it just continues to spin out and I think that had that had a lot to do with it but so I want to look to the future in sort of three ways the first is so if the Koreans are because of what's happening in North Korea focused on China right and really building that relationship with China because of what they think might happen on the Korean Peninsula and they're not really focused on what's happening in the South China Sea and Japan is very focused on what's happening in the South China Sea what are they thinking about North Korea these days like I mean you know is that so Abe has this broader grand straight where does that piece fit in because if anything that was always the rationale for Japan's South Korea relations being good so is it that they don't think that's important anymore they think this leader is not scary I think he's pretty scary they don't think he's that scary so that's the first and then the second thing is we haven't talked about the United States very much normally and so what is the U.S. role what role does the United States play going forward in articulating a vision for the bilateral relationship that is not simply based on historical issues or not simply based on the North Korea problem I mean is the only argument that the United States can make for Japan-Korea cooperation the North Korea problem or is there more there to that and then I want to all right so let's leave it at that two questions we all start taking notes all right just quickly on North Korea Japan and North Korea I think there's a lot more that Japan and Korea can cooperate on and I think the U.S. has a vision for that but North Korea is always the easiest and most convenient source but as you know just a couple of days ago we hit the one year anniversary of Japan lifting some of the sanctions that it had bilateral sanctions that it had vis-a-vis North Korea in exchange for this investigation that North Korea was going to conduct on abducted Japanese and missing Japanese remains and Japanese wives of North Koreans and they've decided not to re-impose those sanctions despite the fact that North Korea has basically produced nothing in the past year that they produce some information apparently on wives and remains but Japan continues to put the abduction issue at the forefront and says if you don't address that the rest is meaningless but they are kind of loathe to take too hard a line vis-a-vis North Korea I think they see to some extent a little bit of water treading going on in the region on North Korea in general and that there's not a whole lot they can do individually the U.S. is still quite mobilized and motivated to deal with North Korea the discussions in Korea on the United States thoughts about missile defense enhancement in Korea and Japan's own enhancement of its security capabilities the ability to help the United States potentially in a North Korean contingency I think they see that as addressing some of the deterrence issues vis-a-vis North Korea and they're using this relief of sanctions and discussion with the North Koreans on missing Japanese as potentially a window to enhance the engagement so they've always had this dialogue and pressure formula ever since Abe was prime minister back in 2006 and I think that essentially continues so it's not completely off the radar screen but there's only so far that they can go I would just briefly mention on the U.S. role because it's a great question that I think Washington in general can be a lot more imaginative about talking to both sides about the big picture in Asia and the big picture in Asia is the question ultimately of what type of Asia do we want to see and what we want is not only in Asia that's stable and prosperous but in Asia that is guided by a continuation of the open rules-based order that we and our allies have created and helped uphold for 70 years that order is at risk it's at risk because of general entropy it's at risk because of age it's at risk because of domestic concerns it's at risk because of rising challenges and the like that to me is a pretty compelling to me at least a compelling argument I would make to both Tokyo and Seoul as to why your bilateral relationship is the two leading democracies and open societies in Asia and must act together to take a leadership role in Asia it's about the future and when you ensure that that strength of that type of order continues and you stabilize and structure the system in such a way that you can cooperatively engage on a range of issues then I think some of these other things start falling into place it's taken a while for the United States to get Japan to see that but now you have Japan talking about what it might be doing in the South China Sea and as I said I think it's part of our base larger plan I think it builds on things that South Korea has done so from the US perspective I think we have, we have a I wouldn't necessarily call it a Trump car but we have a very important and compelling case to make about the Asia that we want to see in the future and why these two countries are absolutely central in fact it cannot happen without them and I'd like to see us make that case Very briefly on the we haven't actually talked a lot about the military side of things and probably when you raise North Korea it's important to remember that post war Japanese military thinking capability enhancement alliance integration are really the organizing principle of all that was a contingency on the Korean Peninsula so it was a cold war context right and when you so the United States still plays that role for Japan it still plays that role via South Korea with Japan and thinking about regional conflict but you know from 2010 we talked about the political dynamics going back and forth if you think separately both Japan and South Korea have had experiences in this post Cold War era that are now not redirecting their attention but maybe allowing them to diverge slightly in terms of threat perception so in 2010 you had the Chul-Nan-Sin-King Yon Kwon-Do right you had the re-invigoration let's put it of the US ROK alliance to include counter provocation right from the North so you've got a strengthening of our alliance relationship and a strengthening of South Korea and focus on something short of the Cold War scenario right for the Japanese however that's still important so anything that happens in the Korean Peninsula is still absolutely important and you can see that in the investments in ballistic missile defense etc right but what you see starting to happen for Japan and its own defense of military thinking is the island dispute with China has changed I think the way in which the Japanese now prioritize and there is this reorganization of Japanese military forces to the South Southwest it doesn't denigrate the worries about the North Korean threat but it diversifies somewhat Japanese threat perception and that's somewhat different from Seoul so that is one of the pieces of the puzzle I think the US is going to have to navigate a little bit differently than it has in the past it's not that you can just additively put the two alliances together and meet both countries defense needs I think now there's a separation there slightly and that's putting some complications into our thinking as well on North Korea too I think the irony is that Seoul and Tokyo now agree on how to address proliferation in the North you know if you go back for a decade or so you can see differences between Seoul and Tokyo about how to handle North Korea be it South-North talks on the peninsula itself be it the regional six-party framework there was real tension there between Tokyo's comfort level with that and Seoul's I think now the South Korea and Japan are pretty much on board with what ought to happen the only slight differences you see the outreach on issues abductions more recently on issues that are particular to each country's peoples but you don't really see a huge difference in terms of how to approach Kim Jong-un himself or the regime I think the U.S. role we could have a whole session on that I worry a little bit about we talk about the United States being a facilitator I like facilitator rather than mediator in the political history issues but I think the U.S. is still a little bit wedded to this notion that North Korea is for the glue that holds us together and I worry a little bit that we are relying a little too heavily on this idea that eventually Tokyo and Seoul come around because they share the same thread about that situation I do think that we have a significant role to play and have not yet explored it I think on some of the maritime issues not necessarily just South China Sea but also East China Sea as well and that's the potential area where I see Japan and South Korea having some options open if they choose to be constructive about them they've got a very good Coast Guard, Coast Guard relationship despite some differences over fisheries they have developed some great communication on ADIZ management and things like that I think there's a little space there for not only the United States but South Korea and Japan to move forward in the maritime side of things to create confidence in the region Can I build just a little bit on the U.S. role piece because I agree on North Korea I think Japan and Korea can actually look at North Korea a little more broadly beyond just the nuclear issue and you have the UN rep office now set up its whole on human rights issues in North Korea human rights and other it's an easy link I think to make some of the engagement vis-à-vis abductions and missing Japanese and human rights and abductions of Koreans and missing Koreans in North Korea as well they're the engagement piece and we have I guess former Kim Dae-jung's former First Lady is potentially going to go to North Korea these kinds of outreach engagement to the extent that there can be greater information sharing coordination it's great we do it on missiles and nukes but that's a diplomatic avenue I think that could be explored number two is you know you have Korea as a part of the AIIB Japan and the U.S. are not Japan and the U.S. are part of TPP Korea is not this whole regional financial trade architecture piece I think there's mutual interest in sharing information and developing almost acting as a caucus within some of these issues because we have very similar interests overall and then in general this idea of mini-lateralism I think U.S. Japan, Korea whether it's in the maritime sphere but also Japan, Korea, China mini-lateralism should be encouraged it's a these are ways of in my mind operationalizing broader multilateral cooperation because you do it in small groups of very capable countries who have a certain set of shared interests and priorities and they can then coordinate that in this broader context regional public goods regional commons issues fisheries, health issues that's an opportunity I think to to put a more positive face on Japan, Korea cooperation granted it's hard to do that until you address or solve some of these other sticky issues that we were talking about but I think there's a kind of a give and take between these types of approaches to some extent you can positively influence the attitudes toward each other by demonstrating common cause constructive work together on other issues granted there's a limit there but the U.S. can play a role particularly in the mini-lateral sphere in that regard by promoting that I think I'm going to go to the audience for questions but let me just ask you one more question before we do that and so I'll start with Misha so what are Japanese interests in Korean unification? Well from the long term perspective clearly it depends how Korean unification takes place of course but from the long term perspective it's removing what Japan considers increasingly an existential threat which is a regime that has proved impervious to all attempts to civilize it and in fact has gone the opposite direction so that it now becomes an actual threat to its neighbors. Without question Tokyo would prefer a reunification that resulted in a western leaning IE towards the United States and therefore by extension Japan a western leaning Korea and that does get to Sheila's point with which I agree that Japan feels isolated in its immediate neighborhood it feels isolated on its block of North Korea I don't think it feels as isolated in the larger neighborhood of Asia as it did 10 years ago or 15 years ago but it feels very isolated right at home and so reunification if done in the right way and that also did not cause what traditionally happens going back thousands of years which is massive dislocation and disruption in the region both for migrants and trade networks and the like but if it goes the right way and it's not economically crippling then you have Japan that will feel much more strategically secure. Yeah the security piece is critical there's long been suspicion that Japan actually secretly prefers a divided Korea I don't think that's the case I don't think it's if it ever was it certainly hasn't been that way for a long time having a unified Korea essentially looking like South Korea is a great economic market it's great on the security side I think Japan would prefer a residual U.S. Korea alliance and some U.S. forces whether it's primary naval perhaps air remaining in the southern part of Korea because the complete withdrawal of the United States there then kind of leaves them as the only Northeast Asian country still hosting U.S. bases which could cause a political problem but they have I think a great interest going forward especially in the context of North Korean dysfunction and nuclear weapons development to support that initiative Just briefly I think the Japanese would be very interested in tempering any of the dislocations that we've just talked about of unification and reduction of the immediate missile threat from the north would be a huge asset for Japan obviously I think the Japanese would probably prefer a non-nuclear Korea a non-nuclear unified Korea if it became a question of nuclearization of course that would have immediate consequences for Japan's own thinking but there's other dislocations and we could talk more but just very briefly across border migration and refugee management is not an immediate problem for Japan but Japan would probably have an interest in how that was managed I think there would be an awful lot of interest in partnering on any kind of investment kind of infrastructure building project with Seoul I think you've got a willing partner in Tokyo in that if the relationship with Seoul and Tokyo is positive but I think there's also a lot that Japan could contribute to and be concerned about in terms of human needs and already you can see cross border pollution you know what do we do about cleaning up North Korea nobody thinks nobody's very sanguine about what North Korea physically North Korea is gonna look like and I think again there's a partnership opportunity for the North and South I mean for North and South Korea but for Japan and South Korea as well I think the regional impact of a unified Korea would be something lingering for most Japanese strategic thinkers which direction a unified Korea would go over the long term not just in immediate dislocations but I think you'd have a sensitivity in Tokyo prolonged sensitivity to the changes in a Korea especially vis-a-vis their relationship with Beijing right wonderful thanks so we'll take a few questions from the audience now we'll start with Chris so is there a mic? is there a mic? right there a veteran thanks Chris Nelson, Nelson Report great discussion as always but my God how many times are we gonna have to keep doing this and just listening to it we can see quite a while the question of what the US should do how many times do we ask that question I think remember it was at AEI Victor and Misha and it was at Richard Armadage and Kurt Campbell you know we talked about the difference between mediation and intervention or management all that kind of stuff and the consensus of that discussion was we need much more active American involvement it sounds from the discussion we're kind of still there but I liked what I think Jim was getting at that we can't wait for President Park and Prime Minister Abe to have individual discrete meetings and conferences on these very important common broader issues is that maybe a role for the US government to explicitly sponsor a trilateral meeting in Asia on how to deal with all the various broader issues you looked at that we not only lead by example but we actually lead in effect taken by the hand and say here we're gonna have this meeting and we want you guys there and here's what we're gonna talk about so that the Korean media, the Japanese media have to cover a story about the ways we're cooperating is that too much or are we just kidding ourselves if we wait for the two sides to figure they need to do these things? I actually think that a lot of that is already going on it was certainly going on when I was in government and whether it's caucusing before ADMM plus meeting or collaborating ahead of sharing notes ahead of an East Asia summit meeting or other kinds of using the trilateral as a means to operationalize PSI having US, Japan, Korea assets be the key assets potentially with some Australian assets as well in a multilateral exercise to deal with nuclear proliferation because we are the closest allies we have the most opportunities to train together high levels of interoperability et cetera but generally we keep it pretty quiet because the political atmosphere doesn't isn't very conducive or it raises too many questions or this and that I do think that we may be rather than get involved or facilitating or mediating on the history issues which I think the US should not do we should respect that process between the two but actually take this to a higher public profile and help get the public used to the idea and defend it when there's gonna be questions and you're getting attacked or why are you doing this explain why it's useful and but I would focus on the security sphere is the easiest but I would tend to slide there's non-traditional security cooperation the disaster relief side but I think on the trade finance regional commons, fisheries, environment, health those are some opportunities perhaps those trilateral networks are less well developed I don't think we have very strong trilateral linkages and in some of those other areas and perhaps that's where some of the new work would need to be done. Yes, right here, right here, yeah. Hello, I am Josh Nichols from Auschwitz Center my question is there's a current like maybe a minority in Japan that is experiencing new nationalism the current rise of Nihon Kaiki in diet where 206 members are affiliated with Nihon Kaiki somewhat really conservative nationalistic organization my question is what is the future wall for Japanese and Korean relations if the continuing rise of new nationalism does not end? Okay, I'm punting that, you're punting it. I can jump in on the internationalism I mean, many people read the Economist article about Japan's new right and things like that I think we got to be a little careful Nihon Kaiki has been around for a long time it may not have been as activist an advocacy group as you can see it now on issues such as Senkaku, it goes to Ishigaki, I write about it in my book they go to Ishigaki regularly they talk to local assembly members but the Nihon Kaiki itself has a kind of organizational structure that may look a little bit I don't mean this with any kind of critique of the Rotary Club or the Lions Club or anything like that but it's a very localized chapter by chapter national it has a huge network of people and participants I would not call them Japan's new nationalist right they've been around but you do see now some with nationalist advocacy ambitions, Tamagami others who now tap into that organization and they have been very willing to be active on issues such as territorial issues such as questions about constitutional revision and other kinds of issues and now increasingly on the comfort women issue so they have been a platform that people have mobilized and used quite effectively on very specific issues but to get to the larger question I'm not sure that I'm doing a project now that I'm looking a little bit more deeply at this question of is there really a resurgence of Japanese nationalism? Perhaps, and again we could be very academic on how we define nationalism but there is now a much more willingness and more mainstream willingness to assert and speak on topics that were taboo in the past in Japan some of which are interpreted as being nationalists like constitutional revision but I would say I would caution you to not look at that issue as an issue of nationalism in Japan it is a huge debate it has proponents on the left and the right and I think it is a generational movement at the moment to get a bigger Japanese voice and thinking about the way in which the post war settlement in Japan which is the constitution by the way was internalized to rethink some of the basic premises of post war Japan that Mr Abe has been a fairly strong proponent of this I think it makes a lot of people conflate the broader conversation with his ambitions as well so yes there is a broader debate on Japanese nationalism and what it should be and if it's taboo or not taboo anymore and some people are quite willing to say we ought to have more nationalism in all kinds of ways but I would suggest you can see the same thing in South Korea you can see the same thing in China I think this is a moment of aspirational nationalism good bad we can debate it across the region frankly and I think it's not unrelated to the shifting balance of power in the region and I think it's not unrelated to the sense that there are some rising powers and there's a sense that Japan may not be on the rise but on the decline and so there's a broader sense of there's a broader backdrop here to think about it but yes there is a lot or more political space in Japan today for talking about issues that were long dubbed as nationalist or right wing and if you take it out of the Japanese political post war political spectrum in fact they're not all that different than some of the debates you're seeing in Europe or in this country or in other countries of Asia so I would be cautious about saying just a broad brushstroke of talking about nationalism is being Japan's but I mean let me just to follow in and anybody can chime in so I mean since we are talking about Japan I mean on the Japanese domestic side who do you think are the most influential agents or groups when it comes to leading shaping opinion on the relationship with Korea? Because if one's thinking about how do we if sure there's a strategic element to this but if we look at the sort of soul fatigue part of it I mean who are you know what are the like if the United States wants to try to improve like who are we looking to target in terms of trying to shape and lead and change opinions in Japan? Well a relatively unconventional answer to that question I would focus on for example the minister of education. Minister Shimomura has really promoted and that's not just him he's kind of representing a broader political group that is upset with kind of this so-called masochistic view of Japanese history and we've beaten ourselves up too much about this and gone overboard and you see the Koreans argue about this all the time too in terms of you know the role of the teachers unions and how textbooks are written and this and that but the end result what I worry about is they're going in the wrong direction on some of these education issues in terms of how deeply they're educating the Japanese students about this experience and that's why to me though the long-term education piece is still the most important it's not just about textbooks it's about visiting UNESCO sites it's about museums it's about television programs and it's about discussions but there's one individual or group that I think he's not a he's not an anti-Korea guy necessarily he's doing it all for different reasons but it has a big impact potentially down the line I'm not sure I mean I think I was following you Victor until you got to who should the United States target so let's separate those out for just a second so clearly we see lots of things and many of the journalists in this room have written about the kind of citizen activism on the street as I don't guy in the response to them so you've got people who stand out and are very discriminatory and hate speech about Koreans and then you have citizens who are countering that on the other side of the street so you've had some of that right US government is gonna have no impact on that kind of activism so that's not gonna help in the diet today you now have a new diet committee who has been formed around the notion of restoring Japanese honor they were specifically organized around issues related to the history of the 20th century including the comfort women Mr. Nakasone, Nakasone's son who's the former foreign minister of Japan is the chairman of that committee so that would be an interesting group to engage in a conversation but again the US role in shaping those people's viewpoints I think is not the right way to go about it but to understand that there are communications and conversations in the diet among diet members there's people on the street and citizens group activists and then there's a lot of counter activism among educators and others so when you saw in this country scholars of Japan and history broadly, Asian history broadly signed a letter about free speech and academic freedom in Japan you got a response among Japanese educators as well so the action reaction process takes place across different pieces of our society with engaging Japan and South Korea on some of these issues but I'm a strong advocate of educators Japanese, Korean and American and Chinese if we can talking a lot more about the 20th century right? I believe in education let me, because we're already over so let me just ask one last question and ask you all for a one sentence answer okay and so, and the question is so what do you think Abe is gonna say on August 15th? I think one sentence in one sentence he's gonna say more than a sentence is it, so the question is I guess the question is is he gonna break new ground or not I guess that's your best guess I don't wanna prognosticate but I would say he's gone as far as he's gone okay, all right yeah I don't think he's going to break new ground okay that's, I mean one sentence you wanna one sentence? that was your one sentence, okay but you know but, comma, but you know, keeping one sentence he it should, there still is enough of a foundation to to improve the Japan-Korea relationship and they are I think actively moving in that direction at the political level right now so it's it's not a prison sentence for Japan-Korea relations if he doesn't necessarily break new ground okay Sheila? I agree that is one sentence thanks for a really interesting discussion thank you very much thanks for our audience