Emperor should make personal apology if he visits S Korea: Lee

Wednesday 12th November, 06:09 AM JST

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hokkaidoguy at 10:22 AM JST - 12th November

Willy Brandt's ultimate goal - not only the goal of the famous photo, but the goal of Ostpolitik - was to undermine the communist governments of Eastern Europe. It was all part of the Cold War. At that point, the question was not about Germans and the war - it was purely an East-West conflict. His visit to the Warsaw Ghetto monument was a political move, designed to further resentment between the Polish population and the government. (Polarize the Poles, so to speak)

Is this what Lee had in mind? An action designed to undermine confidence in his government?

The fact is that the Europeans normalized relations with (West) Germany fairly quickly - and by the time Willy was staging photo ops, the war was far enough behind to be fodder for TV comedy (See: Monty Python's Flying Circus, for one).

Treaties were signed, reparations were paid, and life moved on, for the most part. It certainly wasn't because Willy Brandt fell to his knees. Far more important was the desire to accept that the war was over, and the desire to move on - not on the part of the Germans, but on the part of the rest of Europe.

Japan can only apologise so much - it's up to Korea to stop using this as a political football, accept the apologies, take the last 60+ years of non aggressive behaviour, normalized relations and trade as evidence of Japan's intent, and move on.

Moderator: Readers, please keep your comments focused on Japan rather than Germany.
ebisen at 10:28 AM JST - 12th November

Hokkaidoguy - I doubt all Germany did towards reconciliation was due to the Cold War going on. Cold War ended 20 years ago but their policies towards war remain the same. Try going to Germany and protest against the apology approach they have - it will surely bring you in prison. In Japan nothing like this ever happened. They try to forget it so hard that in some high schools students don't even study anything about WW-II (comletely skipped out of the programme) due to the lack of time (spending all their time learning about ancient history up to Meiji Jidai). I know this from my wife and other friends. I don't say the Japanese should kneel and apologize 5 times a day for something what happened 60 years ago but they should at least know they did some very bad things then.
chardk1 at 10:53 AM JST - 12th November

Eh, Korea whines about not getting a real apology after having settled for cash considerations back when it needed them, Japan bristles with moral indignation and shouts "we did apologize" abroad while whispering "not really" to its conservative constituency back home. Both sides look like self-serving hypocrites stuck in the past to the rest of the world.

Personally, I think Korea would win a lot more international support if its leaders and people said "we don't care whether they are sorry or not, just that they don't distort world history." That would be the intellectually honest thing to do, but the Koreans don't want intellectual honesty. They mostly just want one clean and unambiguous humiliation of Japan.
hokkaidoguy at 10:54 AM JST - 12th November

ebisen: Over the last 20 years, the focus in Germany and abroad has been on the Holocaust, as opposed to the militaristic and colonial past of Germany over the preceding 200 years. That (Mr. Moderator) is where the comparison between Germany and Japan is important in this discussion. Holocaust denial -denial of that specific event - is illegal in Germany. Revisionism applied to WW1 or Germany's colonial past is not. In popular culture, Nov. 11th being the exception, those events in Germany's militaristic past have been completely forgotten.

On your second point, in the nearly 8 years I've been here, I've never met anyone over the age of 15 who displays the level of ignorance you suggest regarding Japan's wartime past. Perhaps we run in different circles, but more likely you're confusing a reluctance to discuss the war with ignorance.

I tend to feign ignorance and indifference when people ask me about religion - not because I don't know about it, I just don't want to talk about it because it rarely ends well. In my experience, the war is a similar topic here.
nigelboy at 11:09 AM JST - 12th November

Over the last 20 years, the focus in Germany and abroad has been on the

Holocaust, as opposed to the militaristic and colonial past of Germany over the preceding 200 years. That (Mr. Moderator) is where the comparison between Germany and Japan is important in this discussion. Holocaust denial -denial of that specific event - is illegal in Germany. Revisionism applied to WW1 or Germany's colonial past is not. In popular culture, Nov. 11th being the exception, those events in Germany's militaristic past have been completely forgotten.

Good point. And if I may continue, this is why Germany's apologies/compensation are limited to the Holocaust victims such as Brandt apology at the Warsaw Ghetto Memorial while as niseigaijin indicated, there is, to my knowledge, no official apologies or compensation given to nations which Germany invaded.

Moderator: All readers back on topic please. Posts that do not refer to South Korea and a possible visit there by the emperor will be removed.
mtt at 11:17 AM JST - 12th November

Japan won Korea as a colony fair and square according to the standard of that time. Neither was the WWII fought in Korea.

I think most Japanese have no desire to "touch a firm emotional string" whatever that is. A comment like this should make it clear Japan must stay away from the people whose mind is stuck in the past.
Patrick Smash at 01:35 PM JST - 12th November

Maybe the Emperor should apologise properly, and maybe the Japanese should take a look at who their leaders are and have a think about whom they elect.
bebert at 02:13 PM JST - 12th November

But the paper also says Lee’s remarks underline the fact that no Japanese leader has gone beyond words in expressing atonement.

In other words, this is about reparation payments. Money. I sympathize with the Koreans and all of the suffering they endured in the 20th century, but further apologies from Japan or the Emperor will only lead to more demands.

Critics claim Japan has not done enough to atone for the atrocities it committed

See? Germany will be paying Holocaust reparations 100 years after the last survivor has died. Japan has wisely avoided getting trapped in the same reparations snare. You can't build better relations with a mooch, because they will continue bitching about past wrongs to keep the money flowing. If Japan and Korea want to build a better relation, do it through trade and cultural exchanges (like they have been doing with Korean Dramas, Manga, etc.).
nandakandamanda at 02:42 PM JST - 12th November

The Emperor is the one person who is respected overseas, because of his past utterances, and his stand on Yasukuni, etc. Lee has no right to demand an apology, but he is correct in understanding that the Emperor would be sincere in what he might say, and it would take a lot of the poison out of people's hearts.

(Unlike past J govt pronouncements, which always somehow left an afertaste, a tiny little niggling doubt...)
ptolemy at 04:30 PM JST - 12th November

Bwa ha ha ha ha ha ha! Oh, sorry Mr. Lee, you're serious. Thought you were joking.
Deepinside at 06:06 PM JST - 12th November

mtt: you said japan most stay away from the people shose mind stuck in the past..

for you concerns,we have to learn to apologize and regonize our mistakes..korean people was living in his coutry very quiet,japan invaded korea not korea to japan..you have to see it was a state of confusion untill this days for many of them,i not korean but i see that no body have the right to invade,kill,or humilliate even terrorifiedd a hole nation and expecting the magic word THANK YOU for all you made japan...look over your shoulder before and think there is childrem,gramma who was killed and tortured there is that funny ? think twice..i have respect and i will sound nice an apologize from the emperator AKIHITO to the Korean country....
New_Attitude at 10:30 PM JST - 12th November

Let's look at history since 1945..... Which country has renounced war as a soverign right and commited it's defense forces to strictly peacekeeping operations and which country has used it's military to murder its own citizens, most recently in Kwangju in 1980? Which country has commited acts of international abduction (anybody remember how Kim Dae Jung went magically from a hotel in Tokyo to jail in Seoul)? China and both Koreas always insist on a apology from the the nation that has been the most free in Asia for the past sixty years, yet completely disregard the massive human rights violations committed by their own nations. If the Emperor does make an apology, then he should indeed take from the Willy Brandt's playbook on this, and use it to really stick it to the Koreans and Chinese. If either one of these countries enjoys a better standard of living they did as far back as the 1970s, then they need to give Japan credit where it's due.
badge123 at 11:10 PM JST - 12th November

Korea needs to keep themselves in the news somehow.
usaexpat at 12:38 AM JST - 13th November

Hokkaidoguy: thank you so much for calling out the detail of the Willy Brandt appology that is alwys overlooked, the political motivation. Perhaps he did feel true remorse, I think he probably did but the show in Poland was political. If Akihito goes to Korea and kneels down and weeps for the war time attrocities that too will be political. If that will satisfy South Korea and better realtions I'm all for it. Now ever the skeptic let me say this: the South Koreans even then would claim that the Emperor was not sincere since that is the only staement that evr comes from SK on this issue.
Rudd at 10:25 AM JST - 18th November

I'm personally glad Japan does not have a law against questioning the past, as that is thought crime pure and simple, a concept alien to a free nation.

As for the history of apologising... Japan pays money so they complain that it didn't come with an apology. Japan apologises at a personal level so they complain that it wasn't official. Japan apologises at an official level so they say it's not sincere enough. Japan apologises at both an official and personal level so they say it's just words which are meaningless without action (i.e. money). Apparently this sort of runtish behaviour is just Korea's way, and shouldn't be taken seriously or personally.