As the plane was ascending, I began thinking about meeting two Japanese men in Tokyo ―- a friend of mine of more than 20 years and Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga.
It was personally amusing to think about meeting the friend with whom I have built up a close friendship since we met at journalism school in New York in the early 1990s.
It was professionally exciting to think about meeting Suga ― in a group interview ― because my fellow executives and editors from newspapers across Asia and I had a lot to discuss with the Japanese politician, who is influential enough to be called a “shadow prime minister.”
It would have been better to get Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, but unfortunately, he was to be in Indonesia for the Asian-African Conference.
Nevertheless, it was good for our group ― the board members of the Asia News Network, an alliance of 22 newspapers in the region ― to have a chance to throw questions to Suga amid so many ongoing issues in the region.
Speaking about the friend first, I have made a habit of seeing him, now president-publisher of a media company, almost whenever I visit Tokyo. We always have a lot to talk about.
Besides the time we spent on the campus and streets of the Big Apple, I had a fond memory of writing an article about the 2000 summit between Korean leaders Kim Dae-jung and Kim Jong-il for a Japanese magazine published by my friend’s company. He asked me to write a personal account of the historic summit that I covered as a member of the South Korean press corps in Pyongyang.
Like many Japanese, he is kind, courteous and considerate enough to move around his schedule to meet my short, packed trip plans and make a dinner reservation at a restaurant in the hotel where I stayed.
Seeing each other for the first time in years, we exchanged the usual pleasantries, ritual talk of the families or work.
I was pleasantly surprised to learn he and his wife had become big fans of Korean television dramas. He knew more about the dramas, mostly relating to kings of ancient Korean kingdoms and dynasties, than I did.
He even produced a memo in which he listed the names of the dramas he saw and some questions to ask of a man from the place where the dramas were made and set. He knew the names of many Korean kings and senior officials and could say words like “manggeuk-haomnida,”an expression a subordinate uses in expressing immeasurable, limitless gratitude to his or her monarch in the most respectful manner.
It was fun to discuss Korean kings and queens with a Japanese friend and I proudly promised to take him to some of the places related to the dramas if he visited Korea.
Although we had a lot more personal things to talk about, we, as usual, turned to some issues of mutual professional concern. This time, I took the initiative. “What do you think of Abe’s foreign policy?”
Answer: “He is too rightist. Half of the Japanese don’t like his policy, but the other half support it because of concerns about China.”
He continued: Of the far rightist Japanese, only 1 percent would think South Korea can invade Japan, but many Japanese think that China can attack Japan and that Japan needs the U.S. to check China’s rising power.
So there are ample reasons, I thought, why Abe is shaking hands with U.S. President Barack Obama, rewriting the mutual defense guidelines to expand Japan’s military role, and trying to charm Americans during his eight-day crisscrossing of what has become Japan’s most beloved ally and patron.
What are the major problems regarding relations among South Korea, China and Japan? “It is largely because of the leaders. Abe is too far right, Xi Jinping is too arrogant and expansionist and Park Geun-hye is narrow-minded.”
Good assessment. The root of the recent chill in Japan’s relations between South Korea and China lies in Abe’s historical revisionism and rightist foreign policy. China under Xi seeks hegemony in the region, which scares Japan and neighboring countries. Park gets flak even from some Koreans that her refusal to meet Abe only worsens ties between their countries and people.
Korea-Japan relations, according to the friend, are worse than I thought. He said some Japanese don’t go to Korea because they are afraid of being beaten up by Koreans infuriated by Abe’s position on sex slavery and other historical issues.
This indeed was surprising and I wondered how political leaders in the two countries perceive the current situation. One answer came only two days after the dinner with my friend, from none other than Suga.
In the group interview, the secretary said, “I don’t think the peoples of both nations feel that the relationship of tension continues between the two countries. People don’t feel that way.”
Politicians are often detached from the public sentiment and the reality, but the difference between what I heard from my friend and the secretary was huge.
I thought what leaders in both Korea and Japan should do first is try to understand not only each other but also what their own people think. Then Suga would accept the fact that many Japanese believe Abe’s policy has angered Koreans to the degree that they are afraid of visiting Korea. For her part, Park would not keep insisting that Abe should do something first to hold a meeting with her.
During the group interview, Suga repeated much of what Abe and other Japanese officials have been saying about issues like relations with Korea and China, and territorial disputes. To me, the unyielding, adamant and self-serving man was pretty different from the man I met two days earlier.
By Chon Shi-yong
Chon Shi-yong is the chief editorial writer of The Korea Herald. He can be reached at sychon@heraldcorp.com. ― Ed.
