Why democracy on the Peninsula presents a problem for Japan

South Korean President Moon Jae-in’s push for peace on the Korean Peninsula threatens to undercut Shinzo Abe’s framing of North Korea as a paramount threat to Japan and the international community, write Christian Wirth and Sebastian Maslow.

Despite condemning North Korea’s most recent missile launch as ‘reckless and irresponsible’, and ordering a ‘stern response’, South Korea’s newly-elected president Moon Jae-in will strive to engage his bellicose neighbour. This course of action is not only a popular demand, it also represents Korea’s only way out of the impasse that could other otherwise end in all-out war.

Even if US President Donald Trump may rethink his earlier statement and miss out on a chat with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un over a burger, Moon’s reviving of the so-called Sunshine engagement policy has the potential to undercut Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s framing of North Korea as a paramount threat to the security of Japan and the international community, to be deterred by all available means.

Moreover, the victory of South Korean democracy casts Abe’s deal with the now imprisoned ex-president Park Geun-hye to ‘finally and irreversibly’ close the chapter on the so-called comfort women in a dubious light. The Abe government’s continuing insistence on the removal of the statue that faces the Japanese embassy in Seoul as a reminder of Tokyo’s historical responsibility is particularly controversial, and displays a fundamental misjudgement of the political circumstances. Scrutinising Park’s political legacy, the status of the bilateral General Security of Military Information Agreement may also become subject to debate again, thus further tarnishing Abe’s achievements.

More than complicating diplomatic ties, however, the de facto regime change in South Korea could affect Abe’s domestic political agenda. While objectively highly desirable, détente and peace on the Korean Peninsula would nevertheless remove one of the main enablers for the Liberal Democratic Party’s and the Prime Minister’s longstanding efforts to ‘normalise’ Japan.

Please click here to read the full “Abe’s South Korea challenge” article in the Asia and the Pacific Policy Society by Griffith Asia Institute Adjunct Member, Dr Christian Wirth and Sebastian Maslow.