In August 2023, Japan, South Korea and the United States signed the Camp David Principles, a set of documents intended to deepen and institutionalize trilateral cooperation. The principles are an achievement for having broadened the three countries’ engagement not just on defense issues—including deepening consultations and information-sharing in times of crisis and implementing trilateral military exercises—but also on commercial and industrial relations, such as coordination on development assistance in the Indo-Pacific, particularly regarding carbon-neutral technologies and supply-chain resilience.
But whether these agreements can endure will depend on domestic politics in Japan and especially South Korea, and not least of all whether their disputes over historical issues, which have been so central in preventing cooperation from taking root in the past, can be overcome.
Japan and South Korea’s dispute over historical issues that date back to the World War II era can be perplexing to outsiders, but they go to the heart of each country’s postwar identity. For Japan, that means turning the page on its imperialist past. For South Korea, it means finally being “made whole” after a devastating experience with Japanese colonization that led to a national fracture that persists to this day. While that doesn’t preclude the possibility of diplomatic agreements like the latest one signed in Camp David, it sets a much higher degree of difficulty for reaching and maintaining them.
That the disputes persist is not due to a lack of previous diplomatic effort. The first attempt at reconciling the relationship after Japan’s colonization of Korea was the 1965 reconciliation treaty that normalized relations between Japan and South Korea. As part of that agreement, Tokyo provided $800 million in reparations, grants and concessional loans to Seoul as compensation for its colonial legacy and to help kickstart South Korea’s development. While the agreement was intended to conclusively settle historical disputes between the two countries, new revelations were uncovered in the late 1980s about the scope and extent of so-called comfort women stations that sexually exploited women in countries under imperial Japan’s control, including Korea. This caused outrage among South Koreans and ultimately led to Japan issuing the “Kono Statement” in 1993. Named for Japan’s then-Chief Cabinet Secretary Kono Yuhei, the declaration acknowledged Japan’s role in these programs. Since then, successive Japanese prime ministers have offered frequent apologies and affirmed the conclusions of the Kono Statement, including former Prime Minister Abe Shinzo in his 2015 statement commemorating the anniversary of Japan’s defeat in World War II.
Yet a series of equivocations and hesitations by Japan’s conservatives on the wording of the Kono Statement, including by Abe, have led many South Koreans to doubt the sincerity of Japan’s apologies. That skepticism has been deepened over the years by Japanese leaders’ periodic visits to Yasukuni Shrine, which commemorates some of Japan’s most notorious war criminals. A 2015 agreement reached between Abe and then-South Korean President Park Geun-hye was meant to “finally and irreversibly” resolve the comfort women dispute. But the accord drew protests in South Korea and anger from the survivors, and was effectively annulled in 2019 by Park’s successor, then-President Moon Jae-in.
In parallel with this, a bilateral dispute regarding the survivors of forced labor programs under Japan’s occupation has caused additional friction, as South Korean courts affirmed the victims’ right to seek compensation from Japan and the firms involved. This was supposed to have been resolved in May 2023 by an agreement reached between South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol and Japanese Prime Minister Kishida Fumio, along with the Camp David Principles reached in August, which aimed to institutionalize trilateral cooperation on information-sharing and joint military exercises. Whether or not these agreements will prove any more durable than their predecessors remains an open question.
There is certainly a practical need for Japan and South Korea to cooperate on issues of common concern. Nevertheless, cooperation will always be ephemeral as long as their historical disputes linger.
There is certainly a practical need for both sides to cooperate on issues of common concern, most basically because both are liberal democracies with market economies. More specifically, both face similar challenges such as China’s economic coercion, which has targeted both countries, and North Korea’s military coercion. And closer cooperation has been a longstanding priority for Washington, with regard to better information-sharing between Tokyo and Seoul, trilateral military exercises with the U.S., discussions on extended deterrence and more.
Nevertheless, cooperation will always be ephemeral as long as the historical disputes linger. Even when ostensible successes are achieved, like those seen last year, there’s always a sense that they won’t survive past the next change in government in Seoul. In this case, the best hope for the Camp David Principles’ prospects is that voters will have moved on or forgotten about them by the time Yoon’s current term ends in 2027. But if a liberal government takes office, there is a strong chance it will choose to revisit the agreements, much like what happened with Moon annulled the 2015 agreement. That will draw the deep ire of Japan and the U.S. and deepen the sense in Tokyo that it can only cooperate with conservative governments in Seoul. The way that the Camp David Principles have institutionalized cooperation will raise the diplomatic costs to defect, but that on its own won’t solve the fundamental dispute. Raising the costs isn’t the same as obviating them, and future South Korean governments may the decide the benefits of defection are worth it.
That it is a reality that must be addressed head on. And the idea that the two countries should simply “move beyond” or “set aside” these historical issues is counterproductive, because the disputes aren’t just about coming to terms with historical legacies. For Japan, the dispute is primarily legal and boils down to the fact that the initial issue of reconciliation was resolved with the 1966 treaty and subsequent agreements. For Tokyo, any efforts to seek further redress by domestic actors in South Korea are efforts to move the goalposts aimed at exploiting tensions for political gain. Making concessions to those demands would just result in the goalposts being moved again.
For South Koreans, the disputes speak to the country’s identity, a dimension that needs to be accounted for in diplomatic negotiations and in the implementation of any agreements with Japan. But within South Korea, there is a further partisan divide in terms of how the disputes are perceived. For South Korean conservatives, like Yoon, Seoul’s primary geopolitical challenge is the “unfinished business” of the Korean War and the final defeat of communist forces. For them, Japan is an essential ally, along with the U.S., and while it may not be fair to say that historical legacies are irrelevant to them, they don’t see them as the immediate priority.
For South Korean liberals, all of modern South Korea’s history—from the Korean War to the dictatorship and violent repression under former President Park Chung Hee, himself a collaborator during the Japanese colonial period—began with Japan’s imperial occupation, and none of the calamities that followed could have occurred without Japan’s initial intervention. For them, the priority is peaceful reconciliation with North Korea to overcome the artificial division that followed the Korean War. Given Japan’s historical role in the processes that led to that division, it cannot be seen as a reliable partner absent a conclusive, decisive break with its past.
This also means there’s a big difference in the domestic political costs of diplomatic engagement for each country. South Korean leaders are far more exposed to public recriminations, drops in the polls and protests should they pursue closer relations with Japan without adequately addressing historical issues. By contrast, Japan’s leaders can expect grumblings and frustration from the public but not much else.
Even if agreements are difficult in this context, there are still ways they can be framed so as to improve diplomacy’s chances of survival. Most basically, any agreement needs to directly address the demands of the victims. One of the reasons the 2015 agreement on comfort women failed was because the surviving victims weren’t consulted during the negotiations. In last year’s agreement, the fact that Japan and the companies charged with exploiting forced labor in Korea didn’t issue funds directly to survivors or their families also stung. Better addressing these issues won’t address all of the anger among South Koreans, but it would go much farther toward making sure that cooperation can last.
In many ways, the dispute between Japan and South Korea is over one of the deepest possible issues in statehood: national identity. So it’s natural that it won’t go away easily. But it can still be ameliorated more effectively than it has been so far. That is where diplomats and stakeholders should set their focus moving forward, to safeguard the gains made last year in Camp David.
Paul Nadeau is an adjunct assistant professor at Temple University’s Japan campus, co-founder and editor of Tokyo Review, and a visiting research fellow at the Asia Pacific Initiative’s Institute of Geoeconomics in Tokyo.