 I'm Paul, and I manage the Asia program here. And it's in that capacity. I'm really delighted to have the honor to welcome you all to this very constructive, important session on Japan-Korea Relations 20 years after the Kim and Obuchi Summit. As part of our ongoing Japan Speaker Series program, we wanted to revisit a topic that we first addressed three years ago, the strategic importance of Japan-Korea relations and prospects for stronger ties in the future. We all know that after years of political, diplomatic, and grassroots efforts to help Japan and South Korea overcome the important historical differences, their diplomatic relationship continues to rest on a shaky political foundation that limits deep and consistent bilateral cooperation. Hopes have generally been unfulfilled for a variety of domestic and external reasons. And in the meantime, the stakes, in my view, get higher for all three countries. The 20th anniversary of one of the most promising agreements for a future-oriented Japan-Korea relationship is a good opportunity to reflect on what types of policies and initiatives have succeeded or failed and why. Our reflective approach will focus today on public and private reconciliation efforts rather than to try to judge the underlying accuracy of competing historical narratives. We will look for strategies to facilitate future long-term progress in Japan-Korea relations, which is certainly in all of our interests. Nearly 20 years ago, the leaders of Japan and South Korea raised expectations for a new Japan ROK partnership for the 21st century, and we're really into the 21st century now, backed by an action plan to foster broader international cooperation and closer people-to-people ties. Their efforts were bolstered by economic globalization and a tougher regional security environment. But mutual dissatisfaction related to historical reconciliation has stymied a real transformation of the relationship. Bilateral trade has more than doubled since 1998 as has the annual exchange of travelers, while mutual foreign direct investment and military-to-military exchanges have quadrupled. Yet historical territorial issues still sour public perceptions and limit cooperation at a critical time. Can we all be smarter about how to pursue long-term reconciliation for the strategic benefit of dealing with the reemergent great power situation in the world, generally and in the Far East in particular and with the rise of China? Our aim today is to foster intellectual exchange and public discussion about the recent evolution, complexity, and future importance of productive Japan-Korea ties with a goal of going beyond the narrow media highlights of current sour relations and putting them in a broader context of shared strategic interests. We will look for strategies to facilitate long-term progress in bilateral relations between both US key allies and consider the appropriate US role if possible as well. We're honored today to have two highly distinguished former diplomatic, former diplomats and former diplomatic colleagues from Japan and the United States. Ambassador Anami has returned, and Stanley Roth would always be pleased to welcome back to Carnegie. They were both handling Asian affairs when the Kim Obuchi Summit took place. I'm also grateful to Professor Yuki Asaba, Yi Wuxian, Carol Gluck, and our good friend Chung Min Lee, and to Jim Zimwalt for contributing to the event today. There is truly an embarrassment of riches with regard to the experience and outlook of the people we have gathered here today. I look forward to make the most of this opportunity. I'll turn it over now to the person responsible for putting this together, Jim Schoff. Thank you very much, Doug. If I can ask our first panelist to come up to the front, and as you get seated, I'll set the stage for our first session. We have two panels today. Well, first of all, I should introduce myself properly. I'm Jim Schoff, senior fellow here in the Asia program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and in charge of our Japan program here. We have two panels here today. The first use is the Kim Obuchi Summit anniversary year as a way to take stock of progress in the relations and implications for the United States. Our discussion will be broader than just that single event, but it is a useful milestone, I think, to highlight how it has helped Japan-Korea relations over the last two decades and where it is also disappointed. And our second session, after a short break in between, will build upon the first session's discussion to consider what kind of Japan-Korea relationship the Allies need and want 20 years from now and what long-term actions can we encourage today to help us get there. And then at the conclusion, when we're all done, you're all invited to join us at a reception afterwards down on the first floor in the back. So hopefully you'll stay around and we'll have a chance to talk more leisurely at that point. So the original title I came up with for this event was Unfulfilled Expectations Amid Rising Stakes. I think the communications department thought that was a little too kitschy or not easy to hook interest in the area, but I thought it was useful to emphasize the rising stakes aspect of where we are today, not only because of North Korea and its nuclear missile development, but also, as Doug mentioned, China's rise and questions about America's future enroll in Asia. I think we're at a pivotal moment in Asia's history and Japan and Korea are going to play extremely important roles in this moment in history. So let me go sit down here and we'll shift into the questions. So just as a quick scene setter, Doug made reference to the action plan that President Kim and Prime Minister Obuchi signed or put into place in 1998. Just to quickly outline what was in that action plan, it's an eight-page document that had several different categories of areas of emphasis that the two countries are going to expand their bilateral relations, expanding channels of government cooperation, including legislative exchange, cooperation in international peace and security, including much more frequent and sophisticated defense exchanges, strengthen cooperation in economic affairs. We certainly saw this in the context of the immediate aftermath of the Asian financial crisis from 1997 and expanded discussions on trade, finance, regional rules, foreign direct investment, tax rules, fisheries, agriculture, high tech. That was actually one of the more successful or certainly active areas of cooperation. Fourth was climate change and environment. Fifth was people and cultural exchanges, including preparations for the World Cup in 2002, but also including NGOs, journalists, education, and youth exchange. There were goals to have 1,000 students going back and forth each year. And over 10 years, that was a 10,000-person goal. Today, when I looked at the numbers, we're at around 100 per year. So I'm not exactly sure when that moment tailed off, but we see elements of success, I think, in these different areas and categories and areas where it's been less impressive. I think it showed the power of leadership to stimulate cooperation at this time, but also, we've seen over this same period, interestingly enough, an exacerbation in some ways of some of the historical and territorial issues that we didn't even see that much beforehand. So we're going to get a chance to survey this broader topic. Let me introduce our guests and our main speakers in discussions today. My far left is Professor Guy Wuxin. He's the director of the Walter Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center, the founding director of the Korea program, a senior fellow of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and a professor of sociology all at Stanford University. So thank you for joining us from California. Next to Professor Shin, Ambassador Kurishige Anami. Very pleased to have him with us from Tokyo. He's the director of the China Center at the Japan Foundation, had a long, distinguished career at the foreign ministry in Japan, previously served as Japan's ambassador to China, was foreign policy advisor to the prime minister and director general of Asian affairs at that particular time in 1998. Stanley Roth, to my right, of course, was the assistant secretary of East Asia, assistant secretary of state for East Asia and Pacific Affairs from 1997 to 2001. So he was on the US watch at that time, also had a successful career at Boeing, as vice president of government relations after that and recently retired. But we're glad to have Stanley with us and Carol Gluck, Professor Gluck from New York, is the George Sampson, sansom professor of history at Columbia University, where she specializes in modern Japan from the late 19th century to the present, international relations, World War II and history writing and public memory in Asia and the West. So thank you and we're gonna have the benefit of Carol in both sessions, looking at both the past and looking forward. So we're gonna have two presentations to start and then I'll turn to our discussants. We'll have a discussion up front and then we'd like to involve the audience because we have a lot of talent and experience in the audience as well. Professor Shin, you have a choice of, you could do here, either wherever you prefer. If you can use the microphone, that'll help. And then. Okay, thanks, Jim, for your kind invitation and I'm very happy to return to Washington, D.C. And I arrived on Tuesday night and snored. I just treat for those living in California to snore. And I guess my job now is to wake you up from a nice nap. As you know, I'm academics. I never worked for the Korean government or any government. And I grew up in Korea and I studied Korea, but I'm not presenting or representing Korean government today in my talk. So I'm presenting this talk as an academic and please keep that in mind. But let me start with what's happening now or just what happened. I don't think I have to explain about this, right? This episode. He made some comments on Japanese rule in Korea. They really angered the Korean audience and I think NBC, we had to let him go so that he couldn't continue to comment during Winter Olympics. So that shows like still, it's a very touch issue in Korea and I'm sure in Japan as well. And about these disputes on territory. Just last week in his speech in commemorating March First Movement in Korea, President Moon Jae-in made a comment on Dokdo which got I guess a protest from Japanese government as well. And also there's a statement about Takeshima in Tokyo National Museum of Territory and Servanty. So once again, I'm not going to get into this in detail, but still disputes over history and territory are not forgotten and continue to make I guess Koreans and Japanese very excited, right? So I'm going to start by showing you what has been done in the past. Despite continuing in a tension, there has been a lot of efforts between the two countries to improve bilateral relations and what has been achieved, what we missed and also what can be done in the future. So I have to do in like in 15 minutes so I'll just go a little in a quickly. The first one is apology. Despite some Chinese and Koreans believing that Japan never made apology, in fact, Japan has made apologies many times. Like in 1993, a corner statement. And so two years later, by the Prime Minister Murayama and of course in 1998, Kim Obuchi declaration that we are looking at today. Also Khan's statements of 2010 and so on. So certainly apology has been main ways of achieving reconciliation between Japan and South Korea. And of course I'll come back to this issue, how much successful this has been. The second one, joint history writing. And after Kim Obuchi in a meeting, Japan and South Korea established joint history research committee in 2001 with the goal of narrowing the gap in views of history. And similar project launched also between Japan and China in 2006. So many historians and experts from Japan and Korea met to create joint history textbook. So that's like a major way of achieving reconciliation. Third one, litigation. As you may know, a lot of lawsuits have been filed against Japanese government and corporations in Korea and also in the United States. And I think I believe in Japan as well, by victims during colonial period. And of course, most of them didn't succeed but there has been also important efforts. And fourth one, say regional exchanges and civil activism. As you know, there is trilateral cooperation secretariat in Seoul representing Japan, South Korea and China. And there has been some track two or track 1.5 meetings on historical issues. Here is one example, the middle one. So we hosted actually 1.5 track meetings in collaboration with trilateral cooperation secretariat a few years ago. And so that we have people from Japan, China, South Korea and United States. And also at the civil society level, there has been a lot of, I guess, exchanges and meetings and so on. So I think it's fair to say that there has been a lot of efforts on both sides to improve the bilateral relationship. I think it's misleading that there has been any efforts. I mean, I think they tried very hard even though the impact has been quite limited for the reasons that I will be explaining. So in one region you can say that it's kind of confusing often time or conflicting messages from Japan. I think this is what a lot of Koreans and Chinese feel because sometimes quite ambiguous wording and sometimes counterproductive statements that follows apologies. And for example, Prime Minister made apology but next day, Minister of Education denies and there's something different. So I think that's why maybe if you look at public poll, majority of Koreans and Chinese believe that Japan has not been sufficiently or sincerely apologized. In other words, actually Japan has made many apologies but many Koreans and Chinese at the same time feel that those apologies have not been sincere. So there's a gap between yes in effects and interpretation or public sentiments. At the same time, for Japan, I believe there has been some apology fatigue, okay? I mean here about a third of Japanese believe that Japan has sufficiently apologized for its wartime crimes. So I guess my Japanese fellow can say better but I guess many Japanese say that how far should we, how many more apologize about our past. So therefore, as a way of reconciliation, I'm not sure how much utility left from this apology because Japan has made them many already and maybe I don't think Koreans or Chinese will ever be satisfied entirely and Japan may feel like how far or how many more do we have to do. And also the failure to narrow the gap between historical memories of involved countries. We know that the efforts to produce a joint history have failed because they have not been able to bridge differences in interpreting the past. I'll come back to that issue a little later. So I think in the end, I think Japan and South Korea produce kind of different textbooks not really one combined during history. And also there continues a tension about legal interpretation of the San Francisco peace treaty and complexity or multiplicity of historical and territorial disputes. For example, we know that there was a conflict of Monday between Japan and South Korea a few years ago, but that's only one dimension. I don't think they can solve all the problem because there's certain in a moral dimension, maybe in a public sentiment get there for it which is very complex and it's not easy to be addressed by any single agreement or any deal. But in my view, there are several factors that hinder the reconciliation process. The one is politics. We remember that Prime Minister Abe attempt to revisit the Gona statement that provoked protest by Koreans and I think by Americans as well. And earlier this year, Moon Jae-in expressed to intent to renegotiate the conference women deal they made a few years ago. So if you look at why they are doing this and certainly domestic politics is a key factor in doing that. The other one, the media also are responsible. I don't know if we have any media from Japan or Korea here, but we understand that bad news sell better. But still, often time they focus on negative side of this issue, whether reporting progress or positive side. And third one, I think education. Let me share a very interesting story. About almost three years ago, I taught two week course on this topic at Yonsei University in Korea over the summer. And we got like 30 plus people or students from China, Japan, and of course Korea and a few from US and European countries. So I asked this question to my students saying, how many of you believe that Japan has made apology? Not surprisingly, Koreans and Chinese students, they say never. Okay, so I said, that's not true. Okay, the fact is that Japan has made several apologies. Then they said, hmm. And said, well, then they were not sincere. Okay, so I said, yeah, we can debate over that because you have to separate facts from interpretation because you could argue that those apologies were not sincere. I mean, you can agree or you can disagree, but you cannot really deny that Japan has made ever apology before. And now I turn to Japanese students because they are very quiet. So I said, what do you think? Do you know what is their response? They say they don't know what we are talking about. So many Korean and Chinese students, they were quite shocked because they expected very strong arguments against theirs from Japanese. But many Japanese seem to, they don't really care or they don't really know. So I think I thought that might be the current situation among young people in three countries and largely headed within politics, media and education. So now back to Obuji and Kim Dae-joon's declaration. So in 1998, it was really breakthrough in the bilateral relations. And seven years later, Kim Dae-joon came to our campus. So I was actually hosting his talk. And to our big surprise, I expect Kim Dae-joon to claim certain credit for improving bilateral relationship, but he was very critical of Japan at the time. Actually to our surprise. And then he said that he reached out to Japan, but then Japanese didn't follow up. I think like in the Goizumi, going to Yasukuni, Shinsa, and so on. So even Kim Dae-joon, I think felt very disappointed seven years later when he met with Obuji in 1998. So we felt that it's a long way to go in terms of achieving reconciliation between two countries. So about that time, we launched a multi-year project. We called Divided Memories, and they including China, Japan, Korea, and United States. So I'm speaking in DC and in a more argument has been that in the US, it's not just a side to this problem. US has to be responsible to certain extent and explain why. So one main finding is that there are differences in the focus of historical memory. So for China and Korea, the main subject of discussion had to do with Japan, like a colonial rule in a conflict of woman, sign of Japanese war, Japanese war crimes, and so on. So that's kind of main focus in their formation of historical memory. For Japanese, it's not much about Korea or China. It's more with United States. So for Japan, United States, a war in the Pacific, atomic bombing, and postal settlements, and so on. So in other words, there's a mismatch in the focus in creating their historical memory. To be blunt, it's correct me if I'm wrong. So Japanese don't really care that much about Korean war Chinese. They care more about what US would say. I mean, to be very blunt and simplify. So that's sort of one of our findings. So we kind of try to look at what's the main narrative in their historical memory. It's like for China, they are trying to create patriotic narrative. And for Korea, collaboration is still a big issue. And Japan, actually, there are multiple memories of war. Actually, compared to Korea or China, there are more diversity in discourse in Japan. And then for US, we are really debating what's the right term to summarize US memory. And our conclusion was an uncomfortable war in the Pacific. Because I think US war quite reluctant compared to other country in discussing the Pacific war. I guess maybe, I don't know, there's some sort of moral element like with atomic bombing and so on. So this is a book that we produce based on interviews with opinion leaders in the four countries. Okay, so let me briefly touch on US war. As I mentioned earlier, in the project, we included United States as integral part of this problem because our belief is that US was not an outsider to this problem. And if you ask which country was the most important influential in shaping a post-World War II regional order in North East Asia, there's no question that it was United States. So certainly, from geopolitical perspective, US has made a lot of contribution in reviving North East Asia economically or politically. From historical reconciliation perspective, we believe that US needs to take some responsibility. I mean, like Tokyo tribunal, San Francisco treats and so on. So I've been arguing that US needs to at least facilitate the process. And I began writing on this topic more than 10 years ago saying that US president should visit Hiroshima or Nagasaki. Actually, I mean, I understand that for political reason, I don't think any US president can make apology. At the same time, can acknowledge human victims out of this atomic bombing. And in return, we argued that Japan's prime minister make a visit to Pearl Harbor and Nanjing and maybe in a meeting with a comfortable money and so on. That's a problem. I said that it shouldn't end as bilateral visit between US and Japan. And US should go first, but then encourage Japan to follow Swiss by going to Hawaii, China, and Korea. So what happened, we know. So Obama went to Hiroshima. I was really happy to see that. And Abe went to Pearl Harbor, which is great. And then he stopped there. So he wouldn't go to China or Korea. In my view, I think he should have gone to China and Korea. You may disagree, but in my view, it was a missed opportunity because you can have excuse for Obama coming to Hiroshima. And then if Abe went to Nanjing and went to Korea meeting with a comfortable woman, I thought they can really create a process of reconciliation in her region. But then just Obama went to Hiroshima and Abe went to Pearl Harbor, then that's it. And I feel it was a missed opportunity. Okay, now, so what can be done for future? Personally, I don't believe that we can solve this problem entirely. I think this will continue. I think we gotta be realistic. Therefore, the question is how to manage possible tensions, how can make slow but gradual progress toward improving relationship. I believe Japan and South Korea share a lot of common interests. One is how to deal with rising China. Also North Korean threat, I mean it's a big issue. And Japan and South Korea have been going through demographic crisis. They're competing over fertility rates and aging population, right? I mean now, I think Japan is ahead, but South Korea catching up very fast. So any common solutions they can discuss. And also in the economic sector, for example, the shortage of jobs in Japan by high unemployment rates in Korea. Now I think more Korean young people are going to work in Japan. I mean that can be a good area of collaboration between the countries. So once again, despite a lot of efforts, the progress has been slow and we can be realistic by focusing on common future-oriented goals to achieve better relationship between the countries. So I'm gonna stop here, then happy to take questions. Thank you. Yeah, no, we'll have a chance to continue the discussion after the initial presentations. But thank you, that's a terrific way to get started as an overview and I really appreciate that kickoff. Ambassador Annami, you've seen a lot of this from the front lines and we'd be interested to hear your views on this topic. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, distinguished guests. After having listened to Professor Shin's excellent and rather serious presentation. Let me tell you a little happier story of the President Kim Dae-joon's visit to Japan. This year commemorates the 20th anniversary of the state visit of President Kim Dae-joon to Japan. The reason why I'm included in this conference, I suppose, is that I am one of the few participants directly involved in that historic event. President Kim's visit to Japan in October 1998 marked a truly epoch-making event in the relationship between Japan and the Republic of Korea. The visit turned out to be a great success in many ways and left me personally unforgettable memories. However, before I introduce to you the episode of the visit, it seems appropriate to briefly review the past history of our two countries. Don't worry, I am not going back to 1500 years ago. After the defeat of Japan in World War II and the end of the Japanese colonial rule on the Korean Peninsula, it took almost three years until the Republic of Korea was founded. You said that ROK was founded in 1919, March. What do you mean? He said that. Anyway. But a couple months. The outbreak of the Korean War in June 1950 intensified the serious confrontation between the USA and the USSR. The political scene in North East Asia at that time could be characterized as a confrontation between the socialist states, namely the USSR, China, North Korea, and Mongolia, versus the free democratic nations, the USA, Japan, and the ROK. Therefore, the US government must have felt it necessary to urge Japan and the ROK normalizing diplomatic relations so as to create two reliable allies in the region. However, it was not until the signing of the San Francisco Peace Treaty in 1952 that normalization talks started. With a great number of problems, such as claim rights deriving from the colonial time, it took nearly 13 years to eventually achieve normalization in August 1965. The final decision was made by President Park Cheon-hee, the leader of the military regime, who silenced the strong opposition of the Korean people against the terms of normalization. Since President Park spent some time in his youth in the Japanese military cadet school, he seemed to have a rather friendly sentiment towards Japan. It may be safe to say that until the assassination of President Park in October 1979, Japan-ROK relations had been maintained to a certain degree in a good condition. By 1967, Japan had already become the world's second largest economy. That was also offering favorable conditions for the economic development of the ROK. Throughout the 1980s and 90s, Japan-ROK relations presented a little different outlook. After the Park Cheon-hee regime, the Korean political scene changed from a military dictatorship to one of democratization, particularly in 1987, liberal movements reached their height. People began to feel free to speak out and harsh words against Japan started to spread widely. In addition, there were other factors to be noted. That is, the end of the Cold War and the emergence of China as a rapidly developing economic power. To the eyes of the Korean people, Japan's importance to Korean national security and economic development must have declined compared with that of the 1970s. Generally speaking, there were ups and downs in our relations, but the basic tone during that time was kept quite low-key, mainly due to the perception of the past history and also the territorial dispute between the two countries. Then the Asian Monetary Crisis started in 1997, severely hit the Korean economy. It was against this general background that President Kim's visit took place. In retrospect, the summer of 1998 was a terribly busy time for us in the foreign ministry. First, on August 31st, North Korea launched a missile named Teppadan. It was a time when we were working hard on the KEDO project, Korean Energy Development Organization, that aimed to provide North Korea light-water nuclear power plants. I had to come to Washington twice in one week to consult with my American counterpart, Mr. Stanley Ross. North Korea declared the fired object was a satellite. While we believed it was a missile. To our surprise, the US government also announced that the object was a satellite. Later, when I had a secret meeting with North Korean officials, I first accused them of their shooting a missile. Their chief delegate said, if you call our satellite a missile, there is no way to continue talks. We are going home. So I said, you must understand the shooting of Teppadan caused the serious problem for us to continue the KEDO project. Amazingly, it was quite all right with them. Teppadan turned out to be a magic word. Secondly, that August, we also had to prepare for the state visit of Chinese president, Jan Zomin, which was originally planned to take place in September, one month ahead of president Kim's visit. To our surprise, the Chinese side all of a sudden proposed to change the date of the visit from September to November because of the serious flooding of the Yantzu River. Therefore, we had to reschedule Jan's visit to not disturb the visit of the Korean president. Substance-wise, there was an issue, the main interest of journalists, whether the Japanese government would once again issue an apology for the past history in the Japan-China joint statement. Prime Minister Obuchi was quite reluctant to do so because in the past, including the normalization communique of 1972, Japan repeatedly manifested deep remorse and the sincere apology to China. But in case of Korea, we all thought it appropriate and significant to make an official apology. Since Japan has never clearly manifested its perception and apology for the past history in the written forms, our strategy at the initial stage was to welcome Janzo Min in September without repeating the past apologies and in October, welcome Kim Dae-jun with a sincere apology. Although this plan was totally disrupted by the change in the order of the visit, we maintain the original position. In the third place, I have to mention that there were negotiations going on for officially agreement. Japan and the ROK had both joined the UN law of the sea in 1996. Accordingly, we had to renew our officially agreement. For both sides, it was a serious domestic political issue involving many influential politicians. When the talks fell into a stalemate in December 1997, Mr. Obuchi, then the foreign minister, visited Seoul and met with President-elect Kim Dae-jun. That was your first encounter. Mr. Obuchi informed Mr. Kim of the decision by the Japanese government to terminate the existing officially agreement in order to expedite the negotiations. I still remember Mr. Kim got really upset, even furious at this unfriendly message. He said he was determined to devote himself to improve relations with Japan after taking up the presidency. With such a prelude, it was imperative for us to achieve the goal of concluding officially agreement before President Kim's visit. The night before his arrival, cabinet ministers in charge from both sides sat face to face and continued negotiation till the morning. The agreement was finally signed, more precisely speaking, initial on the day the president arrived. Another headache in the preparation process on our side was how President Kim would deal with his own kidnapping case that had occurred in 1973 in Tokyo. In his speech to the Japanese parliament, President Kim, instead of accusing the Japanese government of its not very friendly handling of the case, expressed deep appreciation to the people as well as to the government of Japan for having made utmost efforts to save his life. That moment I was standing behind him and I saw the whole audience was truly moved by his genuine and heartfelt words. The great success of the visit should be attributed to the magnanimous statesmanship demonstrated by President Kim. The summit talks took place in a friendly atmosphere also due to Mr. Obuchi's sincere and humble personality. In the talks, President Kim highly regarded Japan's post-war economic prosperity as a democratic nation under the peace constitution and its contribution to the economic, social development of other countries in the region. While discussing the security issues, he explained as his government's so-called sunshine policy towards North Korea. There were three points. First, do not tolerate North Korea's military threat or provocation. Second, do not harm North Korea and not seek integration. Third, to improve North-South relations through reconciliation and cooperation. President Kim added North Korea would be most dangerous when isolating. With regards to the past history, Prime Minister Obuchi expressed deep remorse and made a sincere apology for the serious damage and torture the Korean people suffered during the colonial time. In the Japan ROK joint declaration, the two leaders agreed to overcome the negative remnants of the past and to work together to open a new partnership for the 21st century. Ambitious action programs, which Jim already introduced to you kindly, were adopted. These allowed a significant breakthrough such as enabling mutual cultural exchanges, especially Japanese culture into Korea after some 50 years absence. It was only possible due to the strong leadership of President Kim Jong-un. Unfortunately, Prime Minister Obuchi passed away in the year 2000. Despite this, our two countries successfully co-sponsored World Cup in 2002. We enjoyed good relations for a while. However, it didn't last for long because the ghosts of the past has not totally faded away. President Kim during his visit clearly said, as long as the Japanese side observed the spirit of the joint declaration, his government would not raise the history issues. To our regret, Prime Minister Koizumi's visit to the Yasukuni Shrine and the history textbook issue together with a territorial dispute again cast a shadow on our relations. In closing, let me quote from Kim Dae-joon's speech to the Japanese parliament, which would be a positive message for the future relations over two countries. President Kim said, I firmly believe Korea and Japan together can play a leading role to promote universal values of democracy and market economy in the Asia Pacific region. I understand that will be the main topic for the next session. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much, Ambassador Omnami. I really appreciate you telling that story from your personal observation and reminding me, reminding us certainly of the dramatic events that have taken place in the not too distant past when we talk about assassinations and kidnappings and all that we've gone through. Stanley and Carol, I'm gonna ask you to kind of comment on what you've heard or add some of your own thoughts and insights on this topic and then that'll help us ease into a broader discussion up here. Stanley, let me ask you to go first since we just had to talk about this something. Well, thank you very much. I must say, and this may surprise you, Jim, that when you sent me the invitation, my initial reaction was to decline. That first, I thought of the topic is and Korea reconciliation that the real speaker should be Japan and Korea, not a former American official and it seemed to me could probably do more harm than good. And second, though I've been out of government for more than 17 years and counting, I'm still concerned that if I say anything that's critical of actions by either or both of the countries that might be viewed as blaming either or both countries and worse, possibly even viewed as taking sides. And it's even possible to offend both countries simultaneously. Vice President Penn certainly demonstrated that with his performance at Seoul, how easy it is to set off two countries one time. And I have no desire or intention to make news today and I'm certainly not going to lecture my good friend Ambassador Anami or take sides. Of course, I'm here. And so you might ask, why did I decide to come? Well, besides in the fact that the Carnegie institution has been very kind to me over the years and especially since my retirement, but more importantly, I haven't seen my friend Ambassador Anami for over 10 years. We realized when we chatted yesterday and I couldn't resist the opportunity. Furthermore, I figured if he could handle the sensitive topic, so could I. So here I am. Now I find myself after listening to the presentations with very little to say about the two presentations for a very obvious reason. I'm neither a scholar or a historian. In fact, I made a very deliberate decision which I wouldn't change in hindsight in my youth not to go past the master's degree because I definitely didn't have anything I wanted to study for a PhD degree. I prefer to be a practitioner and I'm not a scholar or historian. But more importantly, I really wanna focus, if you look at the title of this session, it talks about reconciliation before and after the summit. And I wanna focus on the after which Ambassador Anami did not address and Professor Shin only addressed briefly at the end and some of my comments will touch upon some of his. Let me begin by saying that it's easy to find points of disagreement with actions by both countries as an American. Both as an official in my past life and as a private citizen and someone who deeply cares about peace on the Korean Peninsula. I certainly wish of points that both countries had not done certain things which I'm not gonna specify for no reason to make news and you all know them. But I also realized and I started my career working on Capitol Hill so very attuned to politics that there are political realities as well as national interests involved and that this influences policy decisions. And that by the way, I wanna stress this is not unique to Korea and Japan. Look at the current Trump administration and getting support from the base, maintaining it. Or from my US government experience, I worked extensively, went on three missions to Vietnam part of a delegation. I was not the head to try to make progress on the POW-MIA issue, which was absolutely a prerequisite for normalization with Vietnam regardless of what the strategic stakes were. So when one talks about these issues, let us keep the context, this is not unique despite all the years of history to these two countries. Now second point, clearly political realities sometimes impede the ability of countries to carry out policies as well as they would like to and that that is certainly clear, Lee a factor in the relationship between Japan and Korea now. But let's face it, we're dealing with a moment of dire, even existential threats to both Japan, Korea and increasingly to the United States as the result of developments we're all aware of in the North Korean nuclear missile chemical weapon programs and more. In that context, one would wish that despite the politics, despite public opinion, which I emphasize you can't underestimate in democracies and we are talking about two very strong democracies here one of the great pleasures of my career has been watching Korea go from a dictatorship when I started my career in 1979 to a very robust democracy for many years already. But with this threat, it's critical not only that we have better cooperation between Japan and Korea on the security agenda and on Korean Peninsula issues, but at the trilateral level as well. The kind of cooperation we had during the TECOG process for example many years ago during the PERI initiative and afterwards. So that is critical. Now to many people, and we heard a bit of it here, the answer is well the US should take the lead, the US should fix this issue between Japan and Korea. It's almost as if somehow magically the US could pick up the two parties clash heads and solve it. Well, and interestingly, even though the two countries often ask the US government or private Americans or formers, not me, to help resolve the issue, it usually means that they want the US to take the side, their side. And it isn't clear to me that that is necessarily productive or effective and it's a hard thing for the US sometimes to avoid the temptation, but I think this is not gonna be solved by US intervention or by lecturing the two countries. The real answer to me, and it's a very hard one and it was touched on by Professor Shin, has to be reconciliation between the two peoples, especially on the history issue. Now I'm not foolish enough to suggest that history ever goes away entirely and certainly not in one or two generations. I mean, how many of you have had the experience about being lectured by China on the Opium Wars? Just to give a common example. But rather, to me the issue is how do governments manage public opinion? How do they manage their political or shape their political environments as democracies, as flourishing democracies in order to be able to execute the best possible policies and to protect national interests, especially on a kind of security crisis that we face today, a truly serious one. To me, that comes down to a question of leadership and persistence and vision. And I do think it is possible. And so I'm gonna close with a couple of minutes of digression on my own personal experience about reconciliation, having absolutely nothing to do with Japan, Korea, or Asia, and that is as a Jewish American dealing with the Holocaust in Germany. That I'm not a Holocaust child. My parents weren't in the Holocaust. None of my grandparents were in the Holocaust. I went to public schools in New York City, but I did get a Jewish education. I did live a year in Israel as a student and happened to be there in the October War. And my conclusion from all of that was I would never set foot in Germany, that it couldn't be forgiven. There was nothing possible to change my mind that these are the type of egregious violations that you couldn't forgive. And I reached that conclusion and I held to it until the early 80s. When I had a job and my boss said to me, we're going to Germany. And this was during the Cold War. This was in the mid-80s or early 80s. And he said, I said, I'm not going. I'm Jewish. I can't possibly do this. You know the history. And he looked at me scathingly. He was Jewish as well. And he said to me, you do know it's the Cold War. You've heard of the Fulder Gap. You've heard of checkpoint Charlie. You know that the Cold War could become a hot point at any time. You know that Germany is an ally. You're going to Germany if you want this job. Well, I was young and poor and I wanted the job. And frankly, it was also a boss that I deeply respected. And for the first time in my life it occurred to me, maybe I was wrong. Well, I went to Germany and I found out, well, gee, there's another generation of Germans. I forget, maybe even two at that point. But that in fact, that it was not the Germany that I had pictured in my mind. It was a Germany that was not perfect on the Holocaust issue. Obviously, there are Germans till this day who say, we didn't know something Jewish community doesn't find credible in most cases. But the German governments, multiple German governments had made major efforts. We heard the reiteration of apologies that Japan has made and the German governments multiple times have made their apologies. And it was clear that this was not the type of government that I had in my head or the type of culture that I had in my head. When I said, I would never step foot there. And in multiple aspects of my career ever since, the job I had at the time, during my years in the US government, although I mostly traveled to Asia, and then in my business career, I have happily, I emphasize that we're happily traveled to Germany even while I continue to have some concerns about some developments that are going on today. The rise of the right and some of the things that have happened, including not in Germany, but in nearby Austria. But nevertheless, I would get on a plane tomorrow to Germany if I got invited to a conference. All I'm trying to suggest with this long-winded statement is reconciliation can be done. You have to plunge yourself into it. It sometimes requires wisdom. It sometimes requires a boss who makes you. But mostly requires wisdom and experience and persistence. I would like to see the wisdom that was demonstrated by President Kim Dae-jung and Prime Minister Obuchi resurrected to make progress on this issue, which I think has to be done to clear the past for long-term effective cooperation on the North Korean Peninsula issues. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you. I'm glad you said yes and came today. I thought you meant go to Germany. No, no, no. Well, that too. Carol, I'd love to hear your thoughts now that you've heard these three based on your work in the past. Well, it's interesting because I'm the only historian on the panel. And these four speakers were all terrific historians. They all gave you, as far as I'm concerned, a very accurate history in their different talks. So I will echo some of what they said and then say some more things about dealing with bad pasts between and within countries. I just make three points about Japanese-Korean relations, the history of it, and also the so-called history problem. The first one about the history of the relationship, it's really striking to me that in the 20 years since the Kim Obuchi summit, or really in the past 30 years since the end of the Cold War, those are the years that most affect the relationship today, not the history before, actually. It's what's changed in these 20 years. And that's not because Koreans north or south ever forgot Japan's colonial rule or Korean coerced involvement in Japan's aggressive war or the so-called liberation from Japanese colonial rule on August 15, 1945. It's nothing to do with that. It has to do with the so-called memory boom that occurred actually around the world, but more radically and more geopolitically and politically difficult and flammable in Eastern Asia and Eastern Europe than in other places. In other words, these issues were brought again into the spotlight for reasons of the fact that things had changed geopolitically under the Cold War in both of these areas. So if you look at what Jim called exacerbation, I mean, things have been exacerbated in the last 20 years. And looking back at the early 90s, including things when the Comfort Women first came forward in 1991, and then you had the Kono Apology in 1993. And I have to remind people all the time that Kono was in the LDP. I mean, Kono was in the Liberal Democratic Party, but the point was this issue had not become what it is today, and he could issue that statement. And that goes on through much of the 90s, and it culminates in many ways in Kim Dae-jung's position on the Comfort Women and on reconciliation with Japan in 1998, because Kim Dae-jung also made a gesture of compensation by the South Korean government to the former Comfort Women. And he said to Obuchi, I'll let the history issue go. So looking back, the late 1990s was actually followed by a pretty good period in Japanese-Korean relations, and Ambassador Onami pointed to it. I mean, it was the period of the World Cup and of the Korean wave and J-pop and K-pop and popular culture. And in 2005, which was the 60th anniversary of the end of World War II, in public political speeches, the Comfort Women were not much of an issue. Now, look what happened in 2015. It's 10 years later, the 70th anniversary of the Second World War. And it was the main issue between Korea and Japan. And to some extent, China had taken over the Comfort Women from the Nanjing massacre as a big issue. So what happened? And I think this is my second point, and you've already heard it, which is it has to do with domestic politics. And Professor Shin and Ambassador Onami and Stanley Roth have all said, to understand the history issues, you have to look at domestic politics. People always say, well, domestic politics affects foreign policy. Well, in this case, it's actually the domestic politics using foreign issues for domestic reasons. It's kind of the inverse. Both Japanese and Korean leaders. Now, I'm focusing right now on leaders, not on the public opinion for a moment, have been using, in this case, the Comfort Women issue. It's very clear. The 2011 constitutional court ruling on the part of South Korea, which said that the South Korean government was unconstitutional in not pushing for proper recognition and compensation for the former Comfort Women, was conceived in a domestic political context in which, as you said, collaboration was an issue, et cetera, and so forth. And then, of course, took the issue to the UN and made it an international issue. So looking at the domestic political context in South Korea explains some of what brought this issue back so prominently. And in Japan, the Abe's returned to power in December of 2012, and that campaign promise he made to retract the Kono Apology, which, by the way, Prime Minister Abe recanted, retreated from within several weeks of taking office. But Abe, Prime Minister Abe's position on the Comfort Women in particular had been this way for a very long time since he was a diet member. So he came back with a position to get back to power with a position on it. But, and here, I think domestic politics, I would say, is equally important. He was playing, and you've heard these words already, to his conservative base. Though the LDP is, these are democracies, people get voted into office. And this was very much almost like the way the Republicans were talking about their Tea Party base and still talking about their conservative base. So, and that conservative base had grown increasingly angry since the 1990s. And one of the reasons the conservative base in Japan had grown increasingly angry is because of the liberalization of attitudes that occurred in the 90s and was symbolized by Kim Dae Jung. You had a backlash among the Japanese right wing, which had had effect, I think, on the base. So what do we have in 2015? We have both the Japanese and ROK opinion polls showing overwhelmingly animosity toward each other couch first issue comes, why do you not think well of the Japanese? These are from Jim Schoff's polls that he gave us. And on the top of both, it's the history question. So 76% of South Koreans, 80% of Japanese put the history question at the top of these bad relations. Interestingly enough, and we should talk about it more, maybe not today, but it's important, the second issue for both countries was the island's issue. Now, both of those issues have been brought into the public in these last, in the years since, big time into the public, in the years since the Kim Obuchi summit. And that's why you get the apology fatigue that Professor Shin talked about, Japanese say we've apologized enough and South Koreans say you haven't apologized enough. This is absolutely a no-win situation. So my third point has to do, my second was domestic politics, my third point has also been touched on here. Lastly, by Stanley Roth, who's a very good historian, despite saying he didn't want to be one, and that is the importance of public opinion. Now you said it's because it's democracies. I think that's true, but I think actually public opinions are important even in some of the authoritarian countries as well, but they're particularly important in Japan and South Korea. It really does matter now that you have got this revved up public opinion among South Korean and Japanese population. And I think that this is more important than the government congressional exchanges or parliamentary exchanges or economics. All these things are going on, they're all good, and they're not affecting public opinion because public opinion doesn't care about those things, the increasing economic or even the dire existential threat of North Korea. So we need something else if we want that to overwhelm this kind of emotional, it's an emotional question, if reconciliation is the goal. I mean, frankly, President Moon could not make the statement today in South Korea that Kim Jong-un made in 1998 that the ambassador quoted. I firmly believe Korea and Japan today can play a leading role, et cetera. He couldn't make that statement, not as was. So, and that's because of public opinion, not because of what he might believe. I think he's well aware of the existential threat coming from the North. So, and to pick up on this question of you talked about reconciliation in Europe, I don't have that connection. What I know about is reconciliation between West Germany and the rest of Western Europe, particularly France, in the decades after World War II. And I know that the government had, the two governments had a lot to do with it. They were under existential dire threat. It was the Cold War and the Soviet Union, and so they were there where let's say East Asia is now, but so there was a geopolitical impulse, but there was also a lot of change on the level of public opinion. And without that change, and without this constant contact between the Dutch and the Germans and the French and the Germans, and what didn't happen between, let's say the Polish and the Germans, till later you can see the difference. So, the public opinion did make a difference in reconciliation. By 1995, Western Europe had done it. The 50th anniversary of the end of the war was not a problem, but that is not true in Eastern Europe, but it's not true in East Asia. So, there is a history to this memory, and I just wanna point out that the public opinion question was as important as the geopolitical threat in the reconciliation of between Western Germany and the other countries in Europe. There was also the Holocaust, which was an additional impulse, but it had to be sold on the public opinion level, not on the level of apology, because apologies were made by Adna already in the early 50s and that didn't do it. That's just to relate that to that point. Now, I am particularly concerned about the youth in South Korea and China and Japan because they have been learning to hate one another over the past 10 years. If you are on the internet and you will look on the Chinese language, the Japanese language, Korean language, internet discussions of this, you will see that what I call it hate nationalism. These are people who don't know anything about the war, and I can promise you they know nothing about the war. I have my own stories. You told Professor Shin about being in teaching in South Korea. Well, I'm all the time in these countries, but I just had an experience the other day, and you can read all about it in Newsweek Japan in a few weeks, where I've been doing this series with Korean, Japanese, Chinese, and also Korean-Americans, Japanese-Americans, and American students about war memory, where we have this conversation and then it goes on the cover of Newsweek Japan. The first one was on Pearl Harbor, and there are a lot of things that relate to what you said, but I'll skip that. The third one is on the comfort women. And it was so interesting to me to see how the young people, now these are people who are 22 to 27, 21 to 27 years old, maybe, how they have learned something, how the third generation Korean-Americans, their parents were born in the United States, how they have learned the new hostility toward Japan. And so, and then I won't go over, and each of these, these are like, these is transgenerational, without the facts. Without the facts, ask them a fact? No, they don't know, but they know that Japan hasn't done it if they're Korean, they haven't faced, and the Japanese say, we've apologized too much. I felt like I was looking at a carrot, a cartoon, and these aren't graduate students in the United States. So I'm worried about the young people, because when they grow older, they're gonna keep you, what they say, what you learn when you're 18 is the attitude you keep, like you did all the way, how many years? And I'm worried when, all right, I don't want, these people are gonna be the people in power in South Korea or United Korea even, or in China, in Japan in 30 years, and what they're learning now is very scary. So how do you manage this? And this is the right word, I think. I talk about the management of public memory. It's the word I use, it's not solution, it's management. And I believe that the Abe government and the Moon government and all the rest of them need a policy for memory, because they're always reacting to what goes on outside. And that's why the media's always reporting the negative, Professor Shin, because this is a reactive policy, so I'm advocating a positive policy toward managing public memory. Based, by the way, on my study of what happened in Europe, in Western Europe, actually, for 50 years, and the difficulties now in Eastern Europe and East Asia, because they started all over again at the end of the Cold War, I'll tell you that story later. So what do you do? And by the way, the US-Japanese relationship is irrelevant here, that graph about Pearl Harbor and Hiroshima, I just would point out that President Obama did not go to Hiroshima until 2016, that that was 71 years of rapprochement between Japan and the United States. So again, these things have a long history behind it. That's not the history we have between South Korea and Japan or between China and Japan, et cetera, because Japan actually did not do any Asia War memory until after the end of the Cold War. They did what you saw, Pacific War memory, Pearl Harbor to Hiroshima. They did the American story, which is what they did, created together with the Americans during the occupation. So let me say three things that management might do, management being the government. I like to point out, by the way, that Japanese public opinion polls do not agree with the government on many of these things. Most Japanese public opinion polls show that Japanese believe that the comfort women were not a good thing and that they should be compensated and apologized for. So I'm talking here about the government management. On the apology fatigue, that has grown among the public in the past 10 years, as Professor Shin said. So recommendation number one, stop fighting about the statues. It creates the counter effect. And I mean on both sides. The more the statues of the comfort women that are going up all over the world, the more they become an issue, the more the number of statues grows. It's an absolute, equal and opposite reaction. It's like a billiard ball. So it's important to stop making them, and this has to do with the Japanese South Korea question. And both of these sides can manage public memory by stop fighting about it, I think. I mean, I think it's possible. The second thing I think has been mentioned, but not enough, and that is to try to displace the comfort women issue to where it really is in most of the rest of the world, which is at the question of the violation of human rights in the place of sexual violence against women. That's a forward-looking issue. Prime Minister Abe mentioned it when he talked about trafficking. But that needs to, that displacement toward the future while acknowledging the past, which means more apologies, I suppose. But this is a way of managing by flipping it. Because in fact, that's what the comfort women have come to mean for the rest of the world. And since the comfort women issue was so central now, this would be a good thing to try to damp that down. And lastly, I think that the current administrations, they may be able to do this, but that will mean accepting this 2015 agreement on the South Korean side, but it also means on the Japanese side accepting that nothing, as you said, nothing about the past is ever final and irrevocable. Those words in the 2015 agreement, the idea that anything is final and irrevocable is quite astonishing to me. So I think that on the South, accepting the agreement on the South Korean side, but on the Japanese side, it means stop pressing about the statues and stop saying it's final and irrevocable. One last word. I think, by the way, both of these governments can do it. I think the Abe government can do it and still play to its base. I'm not advocating that Prime Minister Abe say something that will antagonize LDP supporters. That would be bad management. I mean, if you're an elected leader. One thing though on the US role, I do not believe that the US can do this. Here I am with historian Professor Roth here. I do not believe this is something that the US can do. The US did put pressure in the year, the 17th anniversary year, 2014, 2015. They put pressure on the comfort women issue. President Obama did. Ambassador Kennedy did. Secretary of State Clinton did. And it's taking sides. I don't think that's what, but what the US can do is to say, let's talk about North Korea because that's where our dire existential threat is. And you will not gonna talk about that in the history problem. That's for you to settle. And the best way to do it is to take this dire threat, I think, and turn it into a vision for the future, which is this afternoon's next panel, because that's practically the only thing that can cure an obsession with the past is a vision for the future. And that's the task, I think, for the South Korean Japanese on this particular issue. That will not, however, solve the island problem. Thank you very much, Carol. No, that's terrific. And there's a lot there. You've zeroed in on a couple of things that I wanna touch on right now. To some extent, I wanna take some of the latter part of your comments and shift some of that discussion into the second panel. So when we talk about the future or next steps, measures to the extent possible, I wanna shift that into the next session. But let me, I wanna save time for the audience to jump in. There's a couple of things I wanna follow up on. And they follow up, they jive well with Carol's points. Because as I was preparing, I came to a very similar conclusion. It's hard not to notice the coincidence of democratization in Korea. I mean, it was 87 that the Korean Church Women United kind of first really began talking about the comfort women issue. And then it became even bigger later on. In some ways, my impression was between Kim Dae-jung and Prime Minister Obuchi and many others, the Kono Statement and other efforts at that time. When you look at the timeline of apologies and activity, many ways the politicians on both sides were, it almost seemed like they were trying to nip this in the bud, that they could actually see what was emerging and coming. And they took steps to deal with it at the time. So my question is, I guess, to some extent, this memory bubble or memory boom that you mentioned, Carol, is it almost a reaction to that and inevitable reaction to that effort by politicians or leaders to try to address the issue? So is there some, ironically, did they almost stimulate some of this or was this, what are some of the other factors beyond just politics that fed into it? Is it technology? Is it democratization? What are some of the key factors in your mind on this point? And I open it up to anyone, Ambassador, you might have some insight in terms of how the, what was the thinking in the time in the government about how should we respond and why? What were the motivations for being proactive on this front and anyone else who'd like to jump in? I think at least for South Korea, I believe democratization was a big factor. So if you look at, you know, Korea, sort of in a history was controlled by the government until late 1980s, you know, during our 30s and years. So from late 1980s on, many Korean scholars and activists, they began to challenge prevailing understanding or memory of history, actually. So there's a lot of scholarship and discourse emerging in 1990s. So that may have coincided with the end of Cold War, but also end of authoritarian rule in South Korea. So, you know, once again, you know, during our 30 years, a lot of discourse was suppressed by the government. But then when Korea became more democratic nation, there's more proliferation of different discourse and narrative and discussions. So I think certainly democratization was a key factor, at least in South Korea. My only comment is to go back to the statement by Ambassador Ahnami. I agree democratization was key, but he also pointed out some policy missteps. And he talked about the passing of Prime Minister Obuchi, people and leadership and actions matter, especially in the context of democracy. It is also easier to keep issues alive through the social media and the internet. That's a gigantic change from the 80s and even the early 90s, you know, that phenomenon. So you put all that together, it becomes harder to, you know, suppress populist inclinations or, you know, makes it harder to achieve reconciliation. I would like to add to this list of factors. This is why it's so complex to use the word that you talked about to solve this. I'd like to add to these factors, the international or transnational factors. And let me just name two. First of all, this whole thing in the 90s, the democratization in Korea from the late 80s, the end of the Cold War in 1989, this coincided with this whole human rights, women's rights, the Beijing Women's Conference that took the whole question of sexual violence against women as a women's rights issue and used the comfort women as an example in all of their legal arguments that building up to the International Criminal Code Statute of 1998. And so the comfort women suddenly were traveling the world. As an example, this was a context which was formed by the Bosnian rape camps, by the war in the former Yugoslavia. It was not formed by anybody who knew anything about World War II. But it was a women's human rights question and that coincided, that was a comfort women, that pushed the comfort women transnationally in a way that they never would have. Now the whole world knows what they were, they don't know anything about it in detail, but they know that this is why we need, well this is why now rape is a crime against humanity in the ICC statute. All right, so that's one factor. Another one that I think is important is the evolution by the 1990s of something that I call a global memory culture. Which is what I mean by that is that you didn't have to apologize in the 1950s. You didn't. The United States didn't have to go around, yes, odd an hour to Israel, but that was about it. This business, the geopolitics of apology, or even the politics of apology to your own people, whether it's the Australian leader for the indigenous people in Australia or it's Americans for slavery or whatever. The politics of apology evolved over those 40, 50 years, largely through this World War II and mostly through the Holocaust memory. So if you take my chronology and say, Japan began to deal with the Asia parts of the war as opposed to the Pacific parts of the war in the 1990s, then the official, the government, they're dealing with the Asia part of the war occurred when that global memory culture was already established and guess what, apologies were necessary. If they had confronted that, if they hadn't been under American occupation and Japan had confronted the Asia war in the 1950s, they wouldn't have had to apologize. So what I'm arguing is that there is now a global memory culture that has got norms and practices and it doesn't matter whether the apologies are sincere or not. Nobody cares whether they're sincere. They just have to be made. So it's not really a, I don't know if this is an instrument of reconciliation, but it's certainly expected in this global memory culture. So I would like to add transnational or international factors to the background of this into the additional technology, politics, everything that you've heard. Okay, thanks. Ambassador, do you wanna say? You don't have to. Well, I served 40 years in the Japanese Foreign Service and most of the time I had deal with this. History issue, mainly with China but also with Korea. And talking about history textbook issue, we had only two issues in question with China. That is Japanese aggression to China and Nanjing incident. But with Korea, there were more than 100 disputing points. So it is very difficult, I still remember. Well, some people tend to compare on the history issue, compare Japan with Germany case. And it is often said that Germany is a success story whereas Japan failed. And when President Kim visited Japan before the visit, he was interviewed by the Japanese press and asked about this point. And we Japanese always say that Japan and Germany are totally different, you know, Nazis, Germany and Japan continue to have emperorship even after the war, whereas Germany could totally reject the Nazis what they did, you know. So we are totally different. But in answering that question from the journalist, President Kim said, still, until today, Japan has not been accepted by your neighbors. Whereas Germany already reconstructed good relations with neighboring countries. So President Kim realized that difference. People just say, oh, Germany did it well in Japan. Kim Dae-jun really understand the difference. Still, he said Japan should do more of this problem because Japan's apology or the perception of the history has not been yet accepted by neighbors and that kind to remember that. Thank you, thank you. So I'm gonna shift the rest of my questions to the second panel, because I have a couple of other follow-up points, but I think I can follow them up then. I'd like to open it up and give some members of the audience a chance to ask a question. We have microphones that will come by. And when you get a microphone, please let us know who you are and try to ask a question relatively quickly so we can get a few people in. I have one gentleman here and then I'll go there and I'll come. My name is Victor Lee from the Global Young Leaders Academy. And I'm from China, came to United States over 20 some years ago. Before I came here, my parents told me, he said, you are single right now, but in the future when you look for a wife, first you need to look for Chinese from mainland. If cannot find Chinese from Taiwan, from Singapore, other places, okay. Koreans are also okay. Even Americans are okay, but cannot be Japanese. And so, but eventually my wife is Japanese. Okay. And now my son is American and he's very proud of being American. And so, I have a story actually that people can change. Actually thinking about when I first also went to Japan, my parents in law first told me, we don't recognize your marriage. Oh, because of history, that's my history. But just after three days when we were leaving and my mother gave my wife some money, said give this money to your husband's parents. And then when my parents, actually before we went there, when they get to know my wife if you'll be Japanese, my father even threatened, I will not recognize you as my son anymore. But now, because that time he was thinking the war, not only in the history in the past, but also in the future is inevitable. That's on his mind, why he against. But now he's thinking about it, oh yeah, Japan also is doing something really good. We should learn from Japan and maybe do something together. And professor talking about we need something, vision. To work. I just kind of wondering how the scholars here, what kind of vision you have for Korea, Japan, maybe even the whole East Asia and how can work together, especially for the youth issue. And then actually we work on some kind of youth. We bring young leaders from around the world come here to work together. And this year we actually create a program for North East Asia peace. Hopefully we can work together. Thank you, thank you very much. It's a big question. Your panelists are welcome to take a stab at the vision question, but that also will be another topic in the second session looking forward 20 years. Let's just take a couple more quick questions, comments before we turn to the panel in the back. I'm Larry Nicks from CSIS and ICAS. When I ask about the American role in this, Stan, I agree with you about caution in the US weighing directly into this historical issue between Japan and South Korea. However, if you have a situation which historically US policies and actions contributed to the emergence and enlarging of a dispute between Japan and South Korea, doesn't the United States have some responsibility then to lay out all of the facts and its own history about these policies, who developed them and why these policies were developed? I'm thinking particularly here of the San Francisco Peace Treaty and the decision to omit, to keep out any sovereignty designation concerning Takashima Tokuto. When the treaty specified sovereignty designations for just about every other island group in the Pacific that was under Japanese occupation until 1945, shouldn't the United States and particularly the State Department lay out all of the history of that? Why this particular island was left out? What were the reasons? Who made the decisions, et cetera? And let the Japanese and South Koreans weigh that issue in terms of how they deal with the island issue in the future. Okay, thanks, Larry. And then very quickly, I'm just gonna take one more. I'm sorry. Yeah, we have a microphone coming up and I want to turn to the panel. You can keep it as brief as possible, sir. Thank you for coming. My name is Mitsuo Nakai, Japan native U.S. citizen, Reagan Foundation. I like what you said about three missed opportunities. I like to think positive. But also, what if there was a problem kidnapping North Korea from Japan? What if South Korean people had information? If they did, I don't know if they do. And trying to help Japan, that's gonna soften up the steps to renegotiate. That's what went through my mind. However, when I heard about the South Korean government, Congress voted saying that's not enough. We wanna renegotiate, this is not good enough. Well, that was after Japan and South Korea signed three things and paid the cash to South Korean government. That made me kinda mad. It wasn't fair to me, that's not fair. It's already done and over with. They're trying to rehash, that's not good. Also, before I finish, by the way, I liked what Stanley said, what Carol said. I have a question on the Anami-san. This may be a dumb idea, but I thought about, because the Japanese prime ministers, they're not gonna make apologies anymore, no longer. They won't. So my point is, maybe, well, Hirohito is gone, Akira is almost gone, but maybe Japanese emperor, take a trip to Asia, including South Korea and China, and soften up the blow, that may help. So that's my question, that's kinda crazy idea. But I think you know better than I do. So I've been here about 40-some years here in this country, so you should know better. Yep, no, no, thanks. I mean, that issue of there's not only positive actions, but in this context of managing things, there's also trying to avoid negative actions as well. Let me open it up to the panel. We've got the division question. We've got Larry's question on U.S. role and this point about the new emperor's potential travel itinerary. Yeah, let me answer two question, one on American role. This gentleman nicely summarized actually my position. I couldn't go into detail because of time limits. I strongly believe that U.S. is responsible in creating the current problem because they didn't handle it properly in Tokyo Tribunal and San Francisco Treaty. So I think it's misleading for you to say it's none of our business. I mean, U.S. is what's involved. At the same time, I don't think U.S. can take sides with either either either either country or just press. I mean, that's why I've been saying that U.S. can lead by example. I began talking to people in the department like 10 years ago. U.S. president should go to Hiroshima and Nagasaki and they said, oh, it's a nice idea but it's not realistic. So I have written actually many articles in foreign affairs and Pacific affairs and other places. I mean, that's why I was really happy to see Obama going to Hiroshima even after a long time. But then I also made it very clear that it shouldn't be just U.S., Japan bilateral thing. Obama should trigger a larger process of regional reconciliation so that by going to Hiroshima, Obama can encourage, I have to go China and Korea as well as Pearl Harbor. But once again, I have to stop at Pearl Harbor. So that's sort of my kind of regret. And regarding this- Can I respond before you come to the other question so we don't go back and forth? Okay, on the U.S. role. I strongly disagree with Professor Shin. I think the notion of U.S. responsibility is slightly ridiculous. We had the Nuremberg trials and it led to positive things in Europe and so the tribunal as being a problem. Establishing the U.N., creating the basis for what, along with other steps, what ultimately came the key to stabilization the Asia-Pacific region, prosperity and democracy in Japan. These were great things, not bad things. As an American, I'm proud of it. And I don't think we have responsibility. We may have interest. Larry, on your suggestion, I think it's useless. I've not read the documents. As I've said, I'm not a historian. I have no interest. One is the possibility it won't resolve it. Second, there's a possibility it will come down to one side or the other. The real point is there's gotta be a political resolution of this just as there has to be with Japan and Russia. Documents and history from ancient people, 70 years old, isn't gonna do a darn thing except possibly make it worse. I think it's a dreadful idea. I think for geopolitical issue, I think U.S. has a very positive record. There's no question. In terms of historical reconciliation, I don't think U.S. can get a positive credit. That's, I think, I want to make it clear. But if we can't disappoint at this point. So regarding this only month of comfort woman, I mean, I share your sentiments. I mean, I wish Moon Jae-in government didn't say that they wanted to renegotiate. But once again, as Carol also points out, South Korean government also has to address public opinion. Okay, here, I think Japan is somewhat responsible as well because what happened was that after deal, Japan's government made very strong in a protest about the stature in Busan actually. So obviously it can be an issue for Japanese government. But I don't think any South Korean government can remove such a stature because that will face very strong opposition. So for example, like near Japan's embassy in Seoul, there's like comfort women in a stature. I stay in a hotel nearby very often. And then in a young college student, they just stay there overnight in tents, whether it's raining, snowing, cold or hot. So how can you remove them? So I'm not saying that, you know, I don't know, we can debate about this thing. But I think Japanese government also should pay a little more attention to public opinion. Because by just pressing Korean government saying that this is our deal, you're not keeping our deal. And I mean, that can lead backfire. So you can go a little quietly and improve it because I think Park Geun-rae government made a deal despite some opposition from public. And then in a sense, we should appreciate that and then go a little, make progress quietly. But anyway, that's my view. And a good time to highlight our reception at the end of this entire event where we'll have a chance to talk about some of these things in more detail as well. Any other response from the panel? Yes, yes. Well, just one comment on what you said about the statue. I think the Japanese side understanding is that it's a part of the whole deal to remove the statue. So it's not just after the agreement was made, Japanese side again forced them, that is not really the story, I would say. As to Japanese emperors traveling, making a good will visit. Actually, as you know that the present emperor visited many, many countries. But in case of Korea, it is still difficult. And the emperor and emperors visited China in 1992. There was a great success, but it may be a little difficult for Korea. And before this in podium, I went through the Kim Dae-joon Japan visit documents. And actually he invited Japanese emperor to Korea. I think that is only exception that Korean president did. And he openly said at the press conference, it is not natural that Japan, the closest neighbor, the emperor never visited Korea and that kind of thing. So it takes that strong leadership. Please come. Thank you very much in that kind of atmosphere. It is difficult to create that sort of atmosphere so far as Korea is concerned. I'm really, really sorry to say this. All right, well, we have another, there's more to talk about and we have, luckily we have another session to discuss that. We're a little bit over time here in the first session. Four, what? I have, well, please join me in thanking our panel for this first session. And we will reconvene at about 4.05, I think. And so you have a chance to take a break and we'll reconvene at 4.05. Please join me again in thanking our panelists for this session.