Yoon's Korea Unification Vision: Liberation, Not Engagement

Yoon's unification policy is a response to, and perhaps ironically a mirror of, the equally dramatic shift in the policy of the North Korean regime.

In a speech to the ruling Workers' Party of Korea in late December, Kim Jong Un declared a“new stand on north-south relations and the reunification policy.” South Korea was now to be regarded as a“hostile” and“belligerent” state under the control of the United States.

All references to peaceful unification were ended, and Kim directed the North Korean military to prepare“to subjugate the whole territory of the south.”

Since Kim's policy shift, there has been an uptick in tough rhetoric and military buildup directed against the South. The North Koreans have conducted a series of short-range ballistic missile tests and earlier this month announced the delivery of 250 nuclear-capable missile launchers to frontline units along the border with the South.

Yoon's address had a decidedly partisan tone as well. He assailed“pseudo-intellectuals” and others who circulate“fake news” to“undermine free societies,” labeling them as“anti-freedom, anti-unification forces.”

The increasingly polarized atmosphere in South Korea was manifest in the unprecedented decision of the opposition parties and groups representing the descendants of anti-Japanese“freedom fighters,” such as the Heritage of Korean Independence, to hold separate ceremonies .

Liberation Day has traditionally been a moment of national unity to honor the spirit of the Korean independence movement against Japan's colonial rule. The decision of the opposition parties and their allies to boycott Yoon's address was intended to protest perceived attempts by the government to distort the history of resistance and justify Japanese revisionism of its colonial rule.

The
controversy
over the Korean government's support of the Japanese application for World Heritage Site status for the Sado gold mines , where Korean forced labor was employed during the war, has fed this mood.

The decision to boycott the official ceremony was also triggered by the government's appointment to key posts of figures associated with the“New Right ,” an intellectual movement that has offered an alternative view of Korea-Japan history. Such moves include the appointment of Kim Hyoung-suk as president of the Independence Hall of Korea, the major museum commemorating this resistance.

“Our society has recently been thrown into confusion by widespread vulgar historical attitudes that are tainted by a pro-Japanese view of history and distortions of the truth,” said Heritage of Korean Independence leader Lee Jong-chan, explaining the group's decision to hold their own separate ceremony.“We couldn't just stand by and watch this historical regression and disparagement.”

Yoon's Liberation Day speech was also notable for its almost complete absence of references to Japan, other than noting that the day marked the end of Imperial Japan's rule and comparing Korea's economic achievements to those of Japan.

In his speech last year, Yoon offered an extensive discussion of the improvement of relations with Japan, including the establishment of closer trilateral security cooperation with the United States and Japan.

It is unclear why Japan disappeared from this year's Liberation Day address – perhaps as a nod to the use of anti-Japanese issues by the opposition or as an indirect acknowledgment of ongoing tensions between the two countries over wartime and colonial history.

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For Japan, August 15 is also an important historical moment, one that marks its surrender and the end of the war. In his speech to commemorate the anniversary of defeat, Prime Minister Fumio Kishida pledged to maintain Japan's pacifist resolve to“never again repeat the devastation of war.”

He noted the three million Japanese who lost their lives in the war, including in the Battle of Okinawa, the bombing raids on Japan and, most of all, the atomic bombings. But he carefully avoided mentioning Japanese aggression across Asia.

At the same time, three members of Kishida's cabinet, including Defense Minister Minoru Kihara,
visited
the controversial Yasukuni Shrine to honor Japan's war dead. The gap between how Korea and Japan mark this moment in history offers a reminder of the way the past continues to color the present.

The dangers of renewed conflict on the Korean Peninsula can never be underestimated. The warring visions of unification offered by President Yoon and North Korean leader Kim are likely to lead to even greater inter-Korean tensions.

Against a backdrop of global uncertainty, the intensification of partisan conflict within South Korea further complicates any effort to reshape relations on the Korean Peninsula.

Daniel Sneider is a lecturer in international policy and East Asian studies at Stanford University and a non-resident distinguished fellow at the Korea Economic Institute of America. The views expressed here are the author's alone.

This article was originally published
by KEI's The Peninsula. It is republished with permission.

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