President-elect Lee Myung-bak said that for a “new, mature Seoul-Tokyo relationship,” there would be no more demands for an apology from Japan.
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Apology Diplomacy Over?
This entry was written by Robert Koehler, posted on January 18, 2008 at 12:48 pm, filed under Asides, Japan, South Korea. Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post.
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21 Comments
Even more interesting, click the top-right link from the Ilbo’s story about LMB’s news conference: Korean sex workers look for greener pastures. Several good pointers for job hunters.
man… Roh Moo-hyun has made it too easy to be the next president.
When is the dream going to be over? This guy is too good to be true.
“New” and “mature” are the best words for this. I like 2MB more all the time.
This should be good for business and good for growing up and stopping the whining.
What’s more, as 2MB says:
“It’s true that Japan has so far only made perfunctory apologies or self-examinations in the past, and such apologies failed to move the Korean people to a large extent. But I’m sure that Japan will conduct a mature diplomacy regardless.”
So, essentially, 2MB is having Korea take the high road and making the Japanese look like a-holes.
http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/ww.....17535.html
Canal project aside, this man has some real genius in him. I’m serious, he would be a ten fold improvement over any American presedential contender.
(’cept for RP!)
In the words of one of my favorite movies, Hwangsanbul (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0378078/):
“F*cking good start….”
Let’s see how he progresses and finishes…
“So, essentially, 2MB is having Korea take the high road and making the Japanese look like a-holes.”
They could/should have been doing this long ago, and, at least on the surface, it sounds like a promising development. However, just because LMB says so, it doesn’t mean that the usual anti-Japan protesters are going to stop cutting their fingers off, burning Japanese flags, or simply screaming abuse in the direction of the embassy through megaphones.
Also, I’m sure the new President will find a few opportunities over his term to milk anti-Japanese sentiment for political gain. Nothing like a coast guard/fishing incident or the moronic comments of a Japanese politician or historian to distract folks from domestic issues.
The honeymoon will be over soon enough, I fear.
or a Japanese Prime Minister visit to Yasakuni, (the Horror!).
#1,
Why would the paper (and its Korean language sister publication, apparently) publicize blogs that recruit prostitutes?
#8
Indeed. 2MB is going to take all the fun out of being Korean. What to do when your government ceases to vent your “righteous anger” over historical wrongdoings (alleged and real) by foreign powers?!
What is left for a Korean to do if he can’t whine? Soul-searching self examination? Cold examination of historical facts in their context? Building a future by looking forward?
Never! Korea is history’s victim and koreans have a Tangun-given right to whine until Confucius comes back!
And this from a guy who earned his street stripes by protesting against former Pres. Park Chung-hee’s efforts to normalize relations with Japan.
I think operative word for all of this is “leadership.” In this part of the world among the so-called democracies, national leaders tend to pander to the emotional masses to get public attention off the really important matters these politicians are screwing up. I’ve seen it first hand in both Japan and Korea and I read about it elsewhere, such as China.
Perhaps since 2MB has not yet had a chance to screw up that he can easily take the high ground that overlooks all of this NE Asian nationalist nonsense. On the other hand, we may see coming on stage a politician — nay! a leader — of international stature.
Well, we can only hope. He is definitely not cut from the seedy piece of cloth that makes up most Asian politicians, so we may have cause for cautious optimism. Perhaps we may be seeing the beginning of a diplomatic Pax Asia. Time will tell…
#1 More unemployed Korean prostitutes are reading the Korea Times then I thought. Good that the paper is trying to help them out with employment tips. For all this talk of crack down, I’m no expert on the subject, but the last time I stopped by the Chongyangni Lotte Dept store, there was a long line of cars waiting to drive through the red light district nearby. My impression was that the crack down was only for show, or that the “full salons” were stepping in to provide services. And, why on earth would Korean prostitutes be traveling to Thailand or Vietnam? They’d be better off here working at Lotteria, unless they get some premium for being ‘exotic Koreans.’ Hard to understand.
#s 1, 10, 14
That story is from 2005.
#12 - And why not? After all, if you can’t change your viewpoint over the course of a couple of decades, you’re likely to be dead (or Ron Paul.)
Kudos. Well done Marilyn Manson!
If we constantly ask for an apology sixty years later from a generation of people who had absolutely nothing to do with the imperialist government, what’s stopping us from asking for an apology from the Mongolian government for what Genghis and Kublai Khan did to Koryo? Why not an apology from China for wiping out Baekje while allying itself with Silla? Russians and China for arming the Norks? etc., etc. I find this to be so ridiculous.
Has anyone here been satisified when someone half-ass apologizes to you while clenching their teeth and you know they dont mean it? Who’s being childish here? Koreans or Japanese?
I can’t imagine that those who constantly demand for apologies from Japan don’t know that the younger generations of Japanese aren’t interested in the group mentality and social hierarchy of past generations. For them, individualism is far more important. Collective guilt? I really wouldn’t count on it.
# 17,
Well, in referrence to Koryo and Mongolia, at least we got some hot Yuan princesses for a hundred years, one of our biatches became a empress (Ki Ka Oh) and as a consequence, one of the Mongol emperors was half Korean (Biligtü Khan).
Troll alert at #11:
“Never! Korea is history’s victim and koreans have a Tangun-given right to whine until Confucius comes back!”
You effectively said same thing in another post, and you are not whining ?
“Never! Korea is history’s victim and koreans have a Tangun-given right to whine until Confucius comes back!”
An interesting read is “The Mind of the Market: Compassionate Apes, Competitive Humans, and Other Tales from Evolutionary Economics” by Skeptic Magazine’s Michael Shermer. The general concept is that as reciprocity is necessary in business for the system to work, a nation that properly allies itself with others for mutual gain will not be harmed. An interesting quote in this regard is “where trade does not go, armies will.”
It appears fairly clear to me that Korea was no victim but brought its fate upon itself by its refusal to engage in significant reciprocity with other nations.
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