When I saw this video, just made by some guy, it struck me as doing a better job, and making Korea seem more attractive, than almost every official tourism promotion I'd seen.
Other than a few seconds of footage taken in Japan, I think it's pretty much perfect. And wouldn't it be nice if some percentage of the Korea Promotion budget were simply set aside to find people who make beautiful videos like this, and to offer them free, all-expenses one or three-month trips to Korea, in order to make one really really great Youtube video. Or four.
What we have next, coming out just recently, is as good.
Famous filmmakers Park Chan-wook (Oldboy) and Park Chan-gyong, have done something lovely.
They took crowd-sourced footage -- anyone could submit -- and hammered together a one-hour (plus change) video that I actually recognize as the Seoul I live in: the ones that's beautiful and ugly and funny and wild and loaded, loaded, loaded with life.
It's probably too long to grab casual viewers, but for anybody who lives in Seoul, who loves Seoul, they will deeply appreciate this video, which ultimately amounts to a gentle, knowing love-letter to one of Asia's most interesting cities.
Garbage collectors, crosswalks, breakneck motorbike delivery boys, urban gardeners, and yogurt ladies in yellow, runaways and street food vendors, mountains and crowded streets. I love this video, because the decision-making mucky-mucks who come up with junk like this appear to have finally stepped aside and deferred to the ones who have, you know, actual artistic talent. Now, perhaps that's because the makers of this video are award-winners and such... but it's a start.
At long last, North Korea headlines contain neither the words "Nuclear" nor "Dennis Rodman.” The UN has released a report. Along with this video.
Powerful stuff.
You can read summaries of the UN’s new report… going so far as to compare North Korea to the Nazis. (Summary. Summary. Original sourceA call to action with no specifics [reminds me of the video below].) Some of the best-known talking heads haven’t weighed in yet -- please put links to them in the comments when they come out, because I'm very interested.
The contents of the report are grim. Even the summaries are, but if you follow North Korea sources like LINK, you knew about this. Three minutes of googling will do it. "Born and Raised in a North Korean Concentration Camp"
The following bullet points, then, are some things I’ve learned, or thought about, that seem relevant in light of the latest report. I may be wrong about any or all of them, because nobody knows dick-all about North Korea, compared to any other country in the world, but feel free to let me know how wrong I am in the comments!
1. The UN doesn't have the power, resources, or consensus to actually do something about these findings, and with Russia and China on the security council, won’t until North Korea openly attacks someone, or slips into actual chaos. An intervention would risk the UN having a failed state on its hands, and that’s messy. A failed state on someone else's hands? Messy… but buck-passing and finger-pointing are how politicians get their exercise. The “Responsibility to Protect” doctrine sounds nice, but it’s toothless right now.
2. Kim Jong-eun has seen that video of Saddam Hussein’s hanging. This report reminds him he probably faces a crimes against humanity charge if his country opens up to the international community. Big disincentive, that. With this, the chance he’ll do desperate things to hold power increases. Counterbalancing that… he’s also doubtless seen that video of Muammar Gadaffi being found by his angry former subjects, and not even surviving to face the ICJ. So...
3. Beyond that endgame, this will change nothing in North Korea. Pundits have been heralding the regime’s fall since Kim Il Sung presided, always incorrectly. Maybe the execution of Jang Song-taek really was the Kim regime's last card to play… but we’ve been guessing wrong about which card is the Kim dynasty’s last for a generation now. The analysts look like Mr. Bean in church.
4. Sunshine didn’t work. Sanctions don’t either. For everybody who thinks it’s time to finally get tough with North Korea… pull your heads out of your asses. To begin with, North Korea has alienated itself from the world so severely already that it now has nothing to lose from continuing with the histrionics. To boot, its leaders use the world’s hostility to ensure internal stability, and you know what? The “tough love” posture from abroad works great for consolidating domestic power. The Nork propaganda machine gets to keep proclaiming a state of perpetual existential threat, which continues to justify the military first policy and all manner of deprivations. To everyone arguing that unconditional aid propped up an evil regime: maybe. But there is more than one way to prop up an evil regime and unremitting hostility and alienation creates conditions which lend North Korea’s leadership more legitimacy and a stronger mandate than they would otherwise have in the eyes of its citizens. And revolution will begin and end with those citizens, and effective policy needs to be geared toward that fact, not towards the emotional satisfaction of getting payback for all those bad things they did.
5. Outside of North Korea, this report is a good thing, because of positioning: the UN won’t do anything directly, and not much will change in North Korea, but it will make it much much harder for those South Korean politicians who want to talk past North Korean human rights issues. It will put China further in the wrong when it supports North Korea rather than pushing for change there. This report tightens the screws on anybody who still wants to ignore or trivialise the human rights crisis going on, and shines a harsh spotlight back where the attention should be, even though Dennis Rodman and nuclear testing sell more papers.
What’s next?
I agree with analysts who hold that any fundamental change to the North Korean state must come from the North Korean people. Without them, it will have no legitimacy, and any intervention without the consent of the citizenry would be fought against with the intensity of three generations of Kim Il Sung-scented brainwashing. The question is not “What can the world do to help North Korea” but “How can the world empower North Koreans to demand a different kind of country for themselves.” Thinking of the issue in those terms creates a very different set of policy and aid priorities than reacting to the histrionics of the the Grand Mucky-muck On Top.
And a final thought: the one that haunts me.
I liked Paul Whitefield’s reflection (LA Times) on how hollow the words “Never again” - referencing the holocaust - ring now. With the Nazi concentration camps, almost nobody actually knew about them. Almost everybody could defend themselves with “We didn’t know.”
With North Korea, we knew. We knew and we knew, and we ignored it. And this is what haunts me about North Korea’s condition: that one day, the surviving North Koreans will confront the world, and ask, “Why didn’t you do anything?” The media used their country’s condition to sell newspapers and ad space, but ignored mass starvation and concentration camps. South Korean politicians cynically used North Koreans' lives as a political wedge issue. No apology will be enough. With Auschwitz not even gone from living memory, we have let this happen again, to our shame as a species.
While you're waiting (with bated breath, I'm sure) for part 2 of "Why Japan Shouldn't Apologize To Korea (Right Now)," I'd like to pass on a few things I've enjoyed reading... in clickbait headline form, just because:
You won't believe what happens when "Drifting Sapphire" sends identical teaching resumes to recruiters with a black photo and a white photo! Go read how she designed the experiment.
And one bit of food for thought:
I followed the conversations at Ask A Korean! about what he calls "culturalism" with great interest, and will probably write about it at more length sometime in the future.
This tendency to focus on cultural differences is interesting to me, because of all the conversations I've had where someone will tell me what Japanese people are like, what Koreans are like, and what Canadians and Americans are like.
It's also especially interesting to me that people look at their own groups through that lens. Koreans will tell you what Koreans are like, and how Koreans think. Americans will tell you what Americans are like, and what they think. And not just to get away with stuff (playing the 'culture' card, though that happens). I've done it myself.
The funny thing about this article is that, according to the Korean's definition of culturalism -- basically using culture as a magic handwave to escape having to look further into an issue -- this article is culturalism to the nth degree. Dr. Kim asks a bunch of questions about Koreans -- Why does this happen in Korea? And suggests that the answer is that Koreans are a strange, enigmatic people: if I did the same, I would clearly be accused of culturalism. "Fish gotta swim, birds gotta fly, Koreans gotta give spam sets at thanksgiving" doesn't cut the mustard. But what about when a local does it? If he published this article in Korean, would he be scoffed at for his "how do magnets work?" credulity?
It's just a miracle, I guess. (warning: bad language)
Or would Koreans nod their heads knowingly and murmur "Yes. We are truly inscrutable to foreigners, perhaps even to ourselves." That he is writing in English suggests a foreign audience... does that change things, and make it more or less forgivable to do that same magic hand wave?
Acting as if Koreans (or Asians in general) are beyond comprehension to westerners (either because we're too advanced, or too unrefined - whatever) strikes me as a kind of performance: Koreans' lives make sense to them, more or less. No Korean waves their hand at their neighbor or relative's behavior and says "it's because they're Korean" unless there's a foreigner in the room. So why put on this pose of mysteriousness for the gaze of foreigners who are imagined to be judging Korea from afar? (Or am I making too much of the article being written in English when I suggest that?) What does it mean that the attitude encapsulated here seems to reflect the same attitude old orientalists had toward Asians? How strange that old white writers once wrote about Asians being inscrutable, and those same sentiments are now being echoed back out of the mouths of Asians themselves, for modern Western audiences!
To be fair, as time goes by, I hear less and less often that jung, or han, or "the Korean national character" cannot be understood by foreigners. But what would be the motivation, or origin, of this kind of self-othering, or self-essentializing? Is it a legacy of colonial mindsets? Is it self-flattery, pure and simple? Are they acting out an orientalist's fantasy to attract tourist dollars, or cultural capital? I have some thoughts, and a bit of a reading list to work through, but I'm interested in hearing what my readers think.
I wrote a term paper on this topic last semester, focused on the Korea Japan situation and I'd like to share some of the things I learned, or concluded, from that.
The basics: from 1910 to 1945, Japan made Korea into a colony, as part of an imperial plan to become in Asia what modern European colonial powers had become in other parts of the world. It went badly for Korea. Along the way, and especially during the Sino-Japanese war and World War II, some horrific things, like torture, human medical experimentation and forcible recruitment of Korean women to be sex-slaves to Japanese soldiers, came to pass.
This series is not discussing those historical facts: those have been documented and debated elsewhere. This series IS discussing the political realities of apologies between these two nations. So if you want to dispute facts. This isn't the blog you're looking for.
During a certain period in the not too distant past, Japan, following a mistaken national policy, advanced along the road to war, only to ensnare the Japanese people in a fateful crisis, and, through its colonial rule and aggression, caused tremendous damage and suffering to the people of many countries, particularly to those of Asian nations. In the hope that no such mistake be made in the future, I regard, in a spirit of humility, these irrefutable facts of history, and express here once again my feelings of deep remorse and state my heartfelt apology. Allow me also to express my feelings of profound mourning for all victims, both at home and abroad, of that history.
Many subsequent apologies have basically repeated the language in this apology.
Here is a series of posts from Ask A Korean! explaining why those apologies have been rejected.
The Murayama apology was made by a progressive government with a weak minority in the Diet, and was controversial in Japanese civil society at the time: after the apology, a string of Japanese government ministers visited the controversial Yasukuni shrine, which honors convicted war criminals along with Japan's war dead, and symbolizes Japan's reluctance to confront and particularly, disown, its colonial past. (NYT: Japanese Apology For War is Welcomed and Criticized) (Apology "Not enough"). It's the same shrine Prime Minister Abe visited in this latest news cycle.
On and off since then, other Japanese leaders have continued to visit Yasukuni shrine, publishing houses have continued to publish textbooks white-washing Japan's war aggressions, public figures have continued to say stupid things about comfort women, and Japan's presiding president considered revoking the 1995 apology, to appease his far-right nationalist supporters. At the grass-roots level, denialist netizens say whatever shit they want pretty much with impunity. So yes, it was an apology, but since there was no break from past behavior, from leadership OR the public, it hasn't come across as very sincere to Koreans.
The question of what WOULD be a "sincere" enough apology is an important one, and we need to have an answer that has broad support among Koreans - enough that asking for more could be seen as unreasonable... to most Koreans. Otherwise that complaint about moving goalposts won't go away, but incentive for another apology will (if it hasn't already). We also don't want the impression to develop that the aggrieved have more invested in being victims, than in moving on. Some argue that is already the case, and that would be a shame, because Korea and Japan have a lot to gain from a better relationship in areas like economy, diplomacy, and security.
Political Economy
The key to the clickbait title lies in the political economy of international apologies. Political economy is a simple enough idea: in the same way financiers look at incomplete information and make educated guesses about how to profit, politicians choose actions to maximize political gain. A sane politician won't make an action or comment or support a policy that will clearly cause them to lose approval points, votes, and reputation, (their political capital) compared to their rivals. Given that politicians decide to issue these kinds of apologies, let's ask, what do politicians risk, and what do they gain from apologizing to another country?
For an apology to be successful, it need to be issued by a country's leaders. It needs to be supported by the population, it needs to be accepted by the other country's leaders, and that acceptance needs to be supported by that population. Those are actually a lot of moving parts already. Things complicate further if both countries have democratic systems, more or less healthy free speech, civil societies, and political oppositions. Things complicate further still if both countries have citizens who can read the other country's language, and even more again if both countries have strong currents of nationalism.
Scenarios: [Update: this used to be a big long thing about two imaginary countries. I'm gonna take a moment to simplify it, because it's about two actual countries.]
Let's imagine three scenarios. Japan's leaders and their people, and Korea's leaders and their people are trying to negotiate an apology that will allow both countries to move forward into better relations.
Scenario A: Strong Apology
This is how you apologize to Comfort Women.
More info here and here. Photo from here.
Or... the way Koreans seem to want it to go:
Swap out Willy Brandt and the gates of the Warsaw Ghetto, and put in Prime Minister Abe at the feet of the surviving Comfort Woman: this apology is everything Koreans have ever wanted. But Japan's political climate is pretty closely balanced: any move by one side is hotly contested by the opposition party.
It's direct and contrite: it expresses responsibility as well as remorse in clear, unambiguous language. It is backed up by substantive action in various arenas: politicians are banned from going to Yasukuni Shrine until the War Crimes display is erected, at which the text has been composed by a joint team of Korean, Japanese and Chinese scholars and historians. War criminals' names are expelled from the shrine, or moved to the new "hall of ignominy." Those same historians and scholars have a free hand to suggest amendments to museum displays, history textbooks, and general school curricula pertaining to the entire colonial period and Pacific War. Japanese lawmakers contact Germany to discuss the ins and outs of Germany's ban on Holocaust denial, with an eye toward a similar law for Japan's internet. The apology and reparations to the surviving comfort women are negotiated with full input from the surviving comfort women and they are compensated out of Japanese government coffers, documented in a way that expresses clear culpability, paired with an apology they helped write.
Japan's ruling party immediately faces a domestic backlash (even Willy Brandt was criticized for kneeling), and the prime minister is crucified in the media and civil society by the usual suspects. "They are humiliating their country in the international arena!" Out come the black vans, a few Korean-owned shops in Osaka get trashed by a few drunk Japanese denialists whose nationalist rage-on is in full swing.
Korean media (of course) covers this backlash (extensively). During the next hotly contested Korean election cycle, one of the parties makes a play for those easy nationalist votes by claiming the apology wasn't enough and promising to overturn Korea's acceptance of the apology.
This, in turn, causes a backlash in Japan: "They were never going to accept any apology" which hurts Japanese politicians supporting the apology in the next election... leading to other politicians seeing an advantage to be gained by promising to walk back that apology. If they win, they walk back that stuff about changing national museums and textbooks, and defang any Holocaust denial-ish laws that were passed. Now there is a backlash in Korea too, agains politicians who accepted that apology. "They're not really sorry, and you're suckers for accepting it."
The deepest bow on google image search. Source
Japan: "We can never bow low enough."
Korea: "Your bow has no meaning anyway"
Japanese leaders who made the apology lose even more political capital, and frustration grows nationally that even a strong, good-faith attempt to fix things, failed. There is less incentive than ever before for any future apologies, and an increasing political disincentive, given how apologizing led to a backlash against the last folks who did it.
Nothing's settled and nobody's happy. Ill will between the countries has probably increased, as long as civil society in Japan has too strong a faction opposing apology.
TL:DR: The apology that would satisfy Korea's people would lead to a backlash in Japan. That backlash would lead to Koreans no longer being satisfied by the apology anyway.
Scenario B: Weak/Qualified (Non-)Apology - the Nopology
Let's say Japan makes the apology its domestic political climate, with that slim majority, can bear. It issues a cautious apology carefully worded, in order to avoid sacrificing too much face. Japanese leaders are protected from domestic criticism.
But over in Korea:
The apology is quickly derided as insincere and unsatisfying. We've seen this happen. Opportunist Korean politicians line up to criticize it and demand a "REAL" apology (and if South Korean politicians don't, North Korea will be quick to say the South is rolling over like a lapdog or somesuch). Protestors line up outside the Japanese embassy. On the other side, Japanese politicians and civilians accuse Koreans of moving the goalposts, or being implacable: "They don't really care about apologies: they just like to play victim."
Result: The apology is rejected. Ill will between the countries increases. Those attempting the apology lose a lot of political capital, and likely even decline to follow through with it. Those stoking anti-sentiment in both countries gain political capital. Nobody is happy except the rabble-rousers, whose positions are more entrenched than before.
Scenario C: Semi-Weak Apology
Same as Scenario B, except the apology is a little more strongly worded: takes more responsibility, or is backed up with the promise of more concrete action. Not as much as Scenario A, but more. Now, in Korea, there is some support for accepting it. But don't forget that Korea is a democracy with protected free speech, so opposition politicians and commentators, whose job it is to oppose things, still argue that the apology isn't enough.
Because of them, fallout is the same except: Some people deride the apology instead of everybody; opposition Korean politicians criticize the apology, instead of ALL Korean politicians (some try to take the high ground, and talk about the long view... which might work, but might get buried under emotional arguments when everyone's nationalist juices are flowing, if the opposition's demagogues are at it.)
Once the Japanese public sees the mixed reaction, their reaction is pretty much the same as in Scenario B, and the end result is more or less the same.
The results in these three scenarios are actually worse for relations between Korea and Japan than the status quo: low grade resentment with the occasional flare-up when a dumbass politician or textbook publisher gets punchy.
TL:DR
For now:
The kind of apology that would be supported by Japan's public won't wash in Korea.
The apology that Korea wants wouldn't wash in Japan.
Half-assed or qualified apologies make things worse.
A full apology shouldn't be attempted until those who would reject even that in Korea, or those who would oppose issuing one in Japan, are small enough minorities that they are politically radioactive, or at least irrelevant.
There is no point in adding another Japan apology, that Korea will also reject, to the list of apologies that have already been rejected, and politicians have strong disincentives to do so, as it generates public ill will and burns political capital for no benefit.
In the political economy of international apologies, politicians are calculating the above three scenarios, and in none of them does the cost/benefit end in the positive, because pleasing nationals of some other country (who don't vote in your election) isn't worth it unless you can please your OWN country's voters at the same time.
And that is Why Japan Shouldn't Apologize To Korea (right now)
Do I think Japan should apologize? Yes. But only one more time, for the last time, in such a way that everyone is satisfied that it will be the last time.
Part 2 coming eventually.
Some useful readings from the paper I wrote, that informed my logic on this topic:
Cooney, Kevin J., and Scarbrough, Alex. 2008. “Japan and South Korea: Can These Two Nations Work Together?” Asian Affairs: An American Review. 35.3: 173-192.
On the troubled relationship between Korea and Japan: a history of attempts to patch things up, and a clear demonstration that domestic opinion can strongly affect international policy and diplomacy.
Glaeser, Charles L., Berger, Thomas U., Mochizuki, Mike M., and Lind, Jennifer. 2009. “Roundtable Discussion of Jennifer Lind’s Sorry States: Apologies in International Politics.” Journal of East Asian Studies. 9: 337-368.
A great panel discussion in which Jennifer Lind raises the point that a badly done apology, or one that isn't seen as sincere enough, can actually worsen the situation between two countries. Charles Glaeser highlights Jennifer Lind's discussion of the lack of other apologies we'd expect to have happened (see upcoming)
Lawson, Stephanei and Tannaka, Seiko. 2011. “War memories and Japan’s ‘Normalization’ as an International Actor: A Critical Analysis.” European Journal of International Relations. 17.3: 405-428.
Contains a very good history of Japanese apologies, and why they were seen as inadequate.
Here is part 2 of this series.
Here is the table of contents.
