The escalating trade war between Japan and the Republic of Korea (ROK) is about much more than white lists, semiconductors, and even wartime forced labor. In reality, it's about two countries that are too fixated on the past and unable to concentrate on the present.

The latest volley came on September 6, when the local legislatures of the ROK's two biggest cities, Seoul and Busan, both passed bills directing the local governments to boycott "war crime companies." That came after Japan removed the ROK from its "white list," making it more difficult for ROK firms to import hundreds of "strategic" technologies, including some that are needed for semiconductors. 

Most analysts point to the immediate cause being an October 2018 South Korean Supreme Court ruling that demanded Japanese firms that employed forced labor during Japan's colonization of South Korea to pay compensation. Japan's government responded by resolutely opposing the ruling and taking actions to put pressure on South Korea. When the Ministry of Economy, Trade, and Industry (METI) issued the new regulations, it stated in part, "The Government of Japan cannot help but state that the Japan-ROK relationship of trust … has been significantly undermined."

The deeper cause of the current tension goes back many years, however. The "relationship of trust" between Japan and the ROK was already in shambles long before the court ruling. South Koreans have long nurtured undying grievances about Japan's abuses of its people during the four decades of Japan's colonization of the Korean Peninsula, yet both sides have also been able to work together for mutual benefit economically and diplomatically. The intensification of historical grievances has waxed and waned between both nations. 

The current period of strained relations began in 2012, with Japanese Prime Minister Abe's second inauguration and the ROK's response to it. During Abe's first term (2006-07), he refrained from visiting the Yasukuni Shrine, prompting criticism from ultra-nationalist members of his Liberal Democratic Party (LDP). Then when campaigning to return to office in 2012, he ran on a historically revisionist platform, aligning with the demands of the LDP's hard right.

He announced that he regretted his decision not to visit the shrine and stated his intention to revise two of Japan's most meaningful apologies, the Kono Statement of 1993 and the Murayama Statement of 1995. The Kono Statement acknowledged Japan's involvement in forcing women into sex slavery at "comfort stations."

That same year, 2012, the ROK also elected a new president, Park Geun-hye, who demanded Japan issue new apologies to comfort women as well as for its other abuses. Japan, on the other hand, felt like it was being put upon by its neighbors. "Japan has clearly and repeatedly expressed its sincere remorse and apologies, and has dealt sincerely with reparation issues," Itaru Umezu, the consul-general of Japan in Hong Kong, wrote in an article in 2000. 

Yet when its leaders often contradict or try to rewrite previous apologies, it is understandable why its neighbors who suffered during the war put so much emphasis on the issue. How can a country take credit for an apology it simultaneously is trying to withdraw? 

Ultimately, Abe did not withdraw either of the apologies (the politics, both domestic and international, are too controversial), but he did continue to dispute historical fact. Before a hearing of the upper house of Japan's Diet in 2013, he denied that Japan's actions in World War II constituted "aggression." Abe's continued visits to the Yasukuni shrine led to South Korea canceling talks with Japan. Only after Abe explicitly announced that he would not revise the apology did the ROK agree to meet with Japan.

In 2015, Japan agreed to pay 1 billion yen and issue yet another apology to resolve "finally and irreversibly" the comfort women issue. That should have been the end of it.

But ROK citizens immediately began criticizing the deal. According to a 2016 survey, just 26% of South Korean people were "satisfied" with it. Almost all of the candidates in the 2017 presidential election called for overturning the agreement, and protests intensified outside Japanese embassies and consulates. Rather than solving the problem, the deal seemingly made things worse.

Anti-Japanese protests in South Korea also became much more heated in the past two years. An elderly man even killed himself outside the Japanese Embassy in an act of self-immolation this summer. If ROK-Japan relations were not so negative at the time, would the South Korean Supreme Court's ruling have had the same impact? Perhaps the two countries would have room to work out a solution. But in the current situation, with goodwill between the two countries already close to zero, there is no room to navigate.

Nothing can change the past and it is time both countries acknowledge that. Now 109 years after Japan took South Korea as a protectorate in 1910, 74 years after South Korea was liberated, 54 years after they agreed to open diplomatic relations, it is time for the ROK and Japan to focus on improving economic and diplomatic relations today, for the good of its citizens and the maintenance of peace today.

Mitchell Blatt is a columnist with China.org.cn. For more information please visit:

http://www.china.org.cn/opinion/MitchellBlatt.htm

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