But if the ‘comfort women’ issue is to be settled ‘finally and irreversibly’ — to use the words of both countries’ foreign ministers — then it is not the strategic imperatives that must be explored but rather what went wrong last time. Because there was a last time and the similarities with the current scenario are striking.
In the early 1990s, domestic and global responses to the first public testimonies by former ‘comfort women’ led to a series of reconciliation efforts by the Japanese government. The most important for the current agreement is the Asian Women’s Fund (AWF) of 1995–2007. The AWF was a public–private initiative that accepted moral responsibility and offered atonement money to women across Asia who had suffered under the ‘comfort women’ system. All money was accompanied by a letter of apology from the sitting prime minister.
Although many in the international community commended the AWF and some women accepted the gesture, including 60 South Korean women, the majority of South Korean former ‘comfort women’ rejected it. Their rejection of the AWF was on the grounds that it did not constitute state compensation or acceptance of legal responsibility. But the fundamental issue was that the women were not adequately consulted so that a mutually acceptable program could be constructed.
This botched plan for reconciliation had long-term repercussions, dividing the Japanese left and inciting the Japanese right. On the left, although some supported the AWF as an imperfect solution, others sided with the mainstream South Korean perspective. This rift diminished the left’s ability to influence politics on the issue.
The Japanese right responded by uniting in a campaign to promote their own narrative of the ‘comfort women’, rejecting the narrative promoted by South Korea and widely accepted globally. These efforts resonated with a Japanese public that has not yet come to a consensus on who the ‘comfort women’ were or what role the government played in establishing a system of coercion and enslavement.
The public response to the December 28 announcement follows this same familiar pattern. Although the current agreement now includes government money for the victims, a key demand of South Korean civil society groups, the position of the Japanese government has not fundamentally changed and again the women themselves were not consulted.
Given the experiences of the 1990s, it could be dangerous to have made this agreement public prior to garnering the support of the relevant domestic actors. Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe may use his conservative nationalist credentials to convince his rightist allies to accept the agreement. And the South Korean government, which will be administering the funds from Japan, may start to consult closely with the ‘comfort women’ and their supporters. Both of these would be good first steps.
But if the goal is actual reconciliation, not just the ability for the two governments to shelve this issue for two or three years in the name of short-term regional cooperation, then more needs to be done. And what is done should be based on a clear understanding of where and why past efforts at reconciliation foundered.
Civil society is at the core of the ‘comfort women’ issue. It was civil society actors, not governmental actors, who brought this issue to the international stage because they thought that the Japanese and South Korean governments were not doing enough. Therefore, civil society, from all ideological camps, needs to buy into the agreement for it to be meaningful.
In order for this to be possible, the written details of the agreement and an actual implementation plan need to be publicly distributed as quickly as possible. In the absence of this, rumours about the agreement already abound — which is exactly what hobbled the AWF in its early stages. It needs to be firmly established that this agreement is only the first of many steps towards mutual understanding. If civil society groups suspect that the agreement is intended as a means to shut down dialogue, resolution will be even further out of sight.
These are the lessons of the 1990s. Without learning from them, any new agreement is doomed to the same fate as those initiatives of the past.
Mary M. McCarthy is Associate Professor of Political Science at Drake University.
It is true that “Civil society is at the core of the ‘comfort women’ issue. It was civil society actors, not governmental actors, who brought this issue to the international stage because they thought that the Japanese and South Korean governments were not doing enough.”
Prof Kazuhiko Togo, the Director of the Institute of World Affairs and Professor of international politics at Kyoto Sangyo University and the former Japanese Ambassador to the Netherlands, nailed it when he wrote here: (http://www.eastasiaforum.org/2016/01/03/whats-behind-abes-new-position-on-comfort-women/)
“It is more difficult to understand why the South Korean government consented to the (28 December 2015) agreement. The agreement does not include an acknowledgement by Japan of its criminal and legal responsibility, which had previously been a prerequisite for the South Korean civic movement.”
The blame should be squarely on Abe’s and the nationalists’ shoulders in Japan for first, vehemently denying such an egregious ‘Comfort Women’ incident ever happened and then taking 70 years to come to an agreement, one which may not be even worth the paper it is written on.
Professor McCarthy is correct when she notes that ‘…this agreement must be the first of many steps towards mutual understanding.’
From a psychological perspective, for reconciliation to take hold and to promote healing it must be an ongoing process. The perpetrator of the acts of aggression must demonstrate true remorse for his/her past misdeeds through many acts where he/she makes amends. Otherwise, a single statement of apology, even with compensation, is perceived as not being sincere by the victims.
In this case such acts of contrition might include PM Abe meeting and apologizing face to face with at least a representative group of these women. It could also include the Emperor of Japan doing likewise. Other things might include holding a memorial ceremony for deceased and living Comfort Women attended by Abe and other representatives of the Japanese government and society. Or building a museum/memorial hall where these women could be honored.
The key thing is that it be an ongoing process which involves these Comfort Women and their family members/supporters. Can Abe tolerate humbling himself like this? Will the nationalists in Japan acknowledge the need to do this?