(EDITORIAL from Korea JoongAng Daily on Nov. 25)
End immature diplomacy before it’s too late
In a surprising turn of events, Japan’s first ceremony to pay tribute to the Korean victims at the Sado Mines on Sado Island off the coast of Niigata Prefecture ended without any Korean government officials attending the event on Sunday. Since the Japanese government promised to hold a memorial service at the site every year when it pushed for the registration of the gold mines as a Unesco World Heritage Site in July, the Korean government decided to send its representative to the event along with the families of the victims. But Seoul chose to not attend the event after strong criticisms arose over Tokyo’s selection of a senior foreign ministry official — a right-wing politician who had paid a visit to the Yasukuni Shrine in 2022 — as its representative to the ceremony.
Despite strong domestic opposition to improving Korea’s relations with Japan, President Yoon Suk Yeol has pushed for various plans to better the bilateral ties since his inauguration. The president’s effort led to the historic Washington Declaration with the leaders of Japan and the United States. Sunday’s event was also intended to show Japan’s apology for the tragic deaths of Korean forced laborers in the mine.
But Japan’s pick of a right-wing politician as its representative to the ceremony is hard to understand. Instead, Tokyo could send a career diplomat or a politician close to Korea. Another problem is that Tokyo notified Seoul of its selection of the representative just two days before the ceremony. Such discourtesy cannot help ensure a better future for the two neighbors. Tokyo should have made effort to fill “the remaining half of the glass” after Seoul eased its hard-line position on the compensation of the past forced labor.
Our foreign ministry also cannot avoid responsibility for the diplomatic fiasco. Concerns erupted from the planning stage of the ceremony after Tokyo let a local committee of Sado residents and civic groups to stage the event. Our government should have paid attention to the development given the volatility of the issue. But it didn’t know who would represent Tokyo for the event until the last-minute notification. Finding out such details and coordinating them in advance are the basics of diplomacy.
Whenever Japan-related issues arose — such as Tokyo’s decision to release the contaminated Fukushima waste water into the Pacific — our government belatedly persuaded opponents to accept them. It did the same when Japan attempted to register the Sado Mines as a World Heritage Site. Diplomacy is about striking a balance of interests with a foreign country. The opposition Democratic Party has denounced the government for its humiliating diplomacy with Japan. Our citizens even branded it as another diplomatic disaster. The government must listen to the criticism.
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