Petty Asian Differences

...JAPANESE-KOREAN NEGOTIATIONS ENTER THEIR SECOND DECADE Petty Asian Differences By Edward Seidensticker Tokyo PEOPLE WHO get drugged by Afro-Asian conferences of various sorts appear to believe that all Africans and Asians—except, of course, Israelis and capitalists—are brothers...

...Indeed, sometimes it almost seems that Asians would prefer not to see one another at all...

...art objects which the Koreans want returned...

...While other subtleties will no doubt be thought of to establish the legitimacy of the junta, the Japanese government still seems in for an embarrassing time...

...the existence of what the Japanese refer to as the Rhee Line (the Koreans call it the Peace Line) which bars Japanese fishing boats from large parts of the Japan Sea...

...The truculent Japanese Socialist party, the main opposition, is opposed to any sort of understanding at all, and threatens to launch a "people's movement" such as that in 1960 which rioted against the Japanese-American Security Treaty...

...Not all the blame for delays can be laid to the Japanese, though...

...Edward Seidensticker, translator of several Japanese novels, has reported from Tokyo for over a decade...

...Asian leaders—India's Jawaharlal Nehru comes to mind—are fond of telling the rest of us to forget our petty differences, though they have not recently been observed forgetting many of their own...

...Perhaps unwisely, the Japanese government has answered the Socialists by arguing the legitimacy of the Korean succession from the government elected in 1948 down to the present military junta...

...Unfortunately, this issue touches a historical nerve that produces divisions even among Japanese conservatives, who in principle favor an accommodation with South Korea...

...Among Asians at least, the facts suggest something different...

...To say that the two must cooperate is to assume, of course, that it would on the whole be a happier thing for them not to go Communist, or to be put in danger of Communist subversion that might require intervention...

...Such is the leisurely pace at which Asian differences are settled...

...and the refusal of the Koreans to allow any sort of official Japanese representation in Korea until relations are fully "normalized...

...The sixth series, which began last autumn, is now in recess...

...Such proposals necessarily invite refusal and so give the impression of Japanese intransigence...

...But now the action of the military junta in purging erstwhile politicians for a period of six years has led to Yun's resignation...

...There are reports of more talks this spring, but there is little chance of a settlement being reached before this summer's elections to the Japanese Diet's Upper House...

...Far more airplanes strike out across the Pacific from Manila to the United States every week than fly between the Philippines and Indonesia, its nearest neighbor...

...Yet the differences within Japan's conservative ranks by no means cover the extent of the national division of opinion on this question...

...In addition, it has a desperate agrarian problem, and no one knows how many of its people are unemployed, although the figure may run as high as a quarter of the working population...

...It is doubtful how popular the "people's movement" would be...

...And a collapse is inevitable without massive foreign aid, which Japan can help supply...

...It might better have argued that if the Korean regime is not legitimate, then neither is the Chinese Communist government of which the Socialists are so fond...

...Many of them do not believe that they owe Korea anything, since the modernization of Korea was undertaken by Japan and since they themselves are reconciled to foregoing any claims they might have against Koreans...

...2) The Korean military junta cannot claim to be a legal successor to the government elected under United Nations supervision in 1948...

...Lateral communications, however, are wanting...

...Korea is an obvious place to begin...

...Many more who accept the principle of claims would restrict it to individual claims, on bank balances and insurance premiums, for instance, and refuse to accept the thesis that the Japanese occupation of Korea was illegal...

...Public opinion polls suggest that most Japanese are reconciled to diplomatic relations with South Korea, although they would prefer not to be gypped by the wily Koreans, and hence urge going slow...

...The public debate in Korea has been silenced, for better or for worse, and the time seems ripe for getting the sticky business done with...

...The split in opinion, however, cuts straight across party lines, suggesting that a popular movement, if one came, would be less than monolithic...

...With 25 million people in an area slightly smaller than Kentucky, South Korea is an over-populated country...

...It is also a poor country, the richer mineral resources of the Korean peninsula and almost 'all of its hydroelectric resources having gone to the North in the partition...

...Japan, on the other hand, once more has a powerful economy...

...These valleys are likely to open out on some center such as London, Paris, New York or Moscow, if they open out at all...

...If the negotiations for the San Francisco Treaty may be called an international project in which the Japanese did not have a free hand, negotiations with Korea may be called their first wholly independent international project after the war...

...IT seems likely that agreement would come quickly on all these issues, if a settlement could first be reached on an issue of dollars and cents—the size of legitimate Korean claims against Japan for the days of the latter's occupation, from 1910-45...

...But negotiations between the two countries have been complicated by numerous irritants: some rocks in the Japan Sea (the Eastern Sea the Koreans call it) which are claimed by both countries...

...Two previous rounds of negotiations were interrupted by revolutions in Korea, and now a new series of Korean political developments has raised awkward complications for the Japanese government and given ammunition to the Socialist opposition...

...The tactics of Nikita Khrushchev, it seems, have admirers and imitators in strange places...

...Nor are the Koreans being really helpful in urging a "summit conference" by top political leaders before specific issues have been settled...

...Nonetheless, the Koreans do have a most extraordinary knack for making things difficult...

...The two major Socialist arguments are: 1) An agreement between Japan and one half of Korea would put a stamp of finality on the partition of Korea (which strongly implies that the blame for the split lies with the West...

...The failure of Japan and Korea to establish normal relations is especially striking not only because the two countries have been at the effort for so long but because they are so important to each other...

...Consequently, they want the moon, or at least the total assets in Japan of all companies which before 1945 had their head offices in Korea...

...No Japanese planes fly to Seoul, the nearest foreign capital, and no Korean planes put into Japan, despite the fact that both Japan and Korea operate international airlines...

...the status of the troublesome Korean minority in Japan...

...The Seoul regime's claim of legitimacy has depended in large part on the presence of President Yun Po-sun, who was also President under the regime that preceded the 1961 coup...

...Now, with the relative decline of the dollar, it must begin to think of taking up international responsibilities commensurate with its strength...

...It is therefore understandable that Prime Minister Hayato Ikeda, who has done very well for himself by lying low ("taking a low posture," to quote the Japanese), should not want trouble at a time when he is facing elections...

...Still other Japanese conservatives favor granting broad concessions, but would prefer that payments take the form of economic aid and thus not be made to seem an admission of historical guilt...

...The collapse of South Korea would bring a Communist government—already in sight of the far north of Japan—within sight of the more vital southwest...

...In other words, it will have taken more than a decade for two neighboring Asian countries that must cooperate to decide that they will in fact cooperate...

...Asia is much less a great communion of brethren than a patchwork of hostile clans, each occupying its own valley...

...Its balance of international payments is such that even if the optimistic five-year plan of the current military regime of Chairman Chung Hee Park is successful, the country will still not be self-sustaining at the end of the five years...

...The initial series of KoreanJapanese conferences — JapaneseKorean, say the Japanese—took place in the spring of 1952, just before the San Francisco Treaty went into effect...

...The Koreans insist that the occupation was indeed illegal...