[Future Vision Series for Korea-Japan Cooperation] XII. The Resonance of Domestic and Foreign Politics and Historical Reconciliation Surrounding the Strata of Nation-State Formation: A Case Study of Korea-Japan Relations

Introduction: Deterioration of National Sentiment in East Asia

The announcement of the forced mobilization solution by the South Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs in March 2023 and the subsequent Korea-Japan summit provided an opportunity to improve Korea-Japan relations. However, it is a common understanding in global journalism that relations between the two countries had deteriorated to an unprecedented extent until recently. It is unusual for the relationship between two countries, which are both democratic societies and have achieved nearly equivalent levels of economic development through social changes such as economic development and democratization, to have been on a downward spiral. Instead, conflicts between the governments of Korea and Japan have arisen in all areas, including the economy, where the two countries have entered into competition due to values related to democracy such as human rights and strengthening self-reliance, and security policies concerning the future of North Korea. Furthermore, judging from media reports and public opinion surveys, not only the relationship between governments but also the relationship between the peoples has deteriorated.

This paper addresses the question of why Korea-Japan relations have deteriorated despite the two countries sharing democratic values and achieving the same level of economic development, and seeks to find the answer in the difference in the principle of social integration, namely the 'nation.' From a constructivist perspective, focusing on the shared values and memories when the subject called 'the nation' is formed,[1]rather than focusing on the logic of typologies of values, it aims to discuss complex political structures by considering the issue of 'resonance' between domestic and international politics.

This discussion starts from two problem awareness points. First, although the basic group of democracy functioning as an institution is 'the nation,' the elements that constitute the group called 'the nation' have been used in the arena of international politics in the form of slogans such as 'democracy as an institution' or 'shared values' without being analyzed in connection with actual politics. Second, despite this, is it truly desirable that both Korea and Japan tend to attribute the deterioration of bilateral relations to the politics, society, and even culture of the other country, driven by the elevation of their respective national consciousness?

What we focus on as an element that forms the nation is shared memory. It is now common sense that a nation is an imagined community that humans cannot directly perceive, but what plays a crucial role in making it a reality in human imagination and enabling society to function is the historical memory shared by the people.

Certainly, regarding the causes of historical disputes in Korea-Japan relations, it is pointed out that national interests in security and economy have changed due to China's rise, and that the balance of power between Korea and Japan has shifted from an asymmetrical state to a balanced state due to Korea's economic development. However, discussions of national power or national interest cannot be separated from the changes at the level of the people, who are the subjects that perceive these things and share the belief that such perceptions are legitimate. It is necessary to examine the basic concepts for considering the linkage between the changes in the domestic political system, which has shifted from authoritarianism to democracy, the basic direction of national integration supporting it, and how these changes relate to international politics.[2] In other words, when analyzing national interest or national power, we must consider how the elements that constitute the national group are linked to national interest or national power, which is the premise. This is the problem awareness of the main body of this paper.[3]

Focusing on how shared historical memories that sustain a nation, when combined with political processes transcending domestic and international dimensions, cause conflict, the main body of this paper will examine the structure in which values related to memory form a complex, and how the strata of these complexes alter perceptions of national power and interest, leading to deteriorating relations through resonance at different domestic and international levels, using the historical issues that have unfolded between Korea and Japan as an example.

I. The Nature of Confrontation: Democracy, Emotion, Values, and Memory

For specific memories to be selected from various experiences, universal values that give meaning to human beings are important. Then, how do universal values, symbolized by human rights, democracy, and freedom, combine with people's historical memories to create emotions as a nation, and how do they become subjects of continuous debate within a certain structure?

What is important is the awareness that the observing subject and the object are difficult to separate. While acknowledging this premise, the universal values that form the basis of the claims of both sides in historical disputes often lie at opposite poles. On one side are the universal and self-evident values of human rights, symbolized by 'victim-centeredness' and 'women's dignity.' On the other side are the universal values of law and order, stability, and prosperity, symbolized by 'compliance with international law' and 'already resolved by inter-state agreement,' making dialogue seem impossible.

It can be said that the fact that these bifurcated values are mobilized in historical issues to support each other's claims aligns with a realistic perspective.[4] How do the values of legal stability and affluence, which are in opposition to human rights and women's dignity, combine with the national memories of Korea and Japan, respectively? Under what conditions does this combination of values and memories become a social norm that sustains a system, and under what conditions does it emerge as 'justice' that justifies objections to that system?

Generally, justice can be defined as the value advocated by those who attempt to reform minority groups or the status quo. The Korean people share historical memories that have been strengthened in conjunction with the pursuit of justice by movements in Korean civil society. Because these memories are closely related to Japan's colonial rule of Korea, they interact with the memories shared by the Japanese people through transnational movements, eliciting empathy or backlash. This process also influences the domestic political process in Japan, which decides how to respond to the South Korean government's requests.[5]

1. Human Rights and Development as National Memory and Value in Korea: The Other Side of Japanese Imperialism

How have national memories been linked with and changed by values within the context of national integration in Korea following democratization? Extending the framework discussed so far, it can be argued that memories shared by the Korean people have become linked with different values following democratization.

Indeed, during the era of development priority under the authoritarian regime before democratization, values of development and affluence were linked with national memories in Korea as well. This is evidenced by Park Chung-hee's slogan 'Overcome Japan,' the 'Yushin Constitution' system, which disregarded the constitution and originated from the Meiji Restoration, and the fact that the normalization of relations with Japan was pursued, pushing aside domestic opposition, by prioritizing loans from Japan (Miyano Masashi 2021). However, through the process of democratization of the political system, a transition occurred where the value of human rights, advocated by forces opposing the government, merged with Korea's national memories.

How, then, did the transition from historical memories linked to values of development or affluence to those linked to human rights occur? The democratization of Korea in the 1980s marked a shift from the tendency of the Park Chung-hee authoritarian regime to pursue development by emulating Japan as a standard of modernity and civilization, to an emphasis on resistance by the populace based on human rights. In other words, Korea's democratization can be said to have 'progressed through a new interpretation of history.' As evidence, the shift in the logic of resistance, which became intertwined with democratization, transformed the concept of modernity from a positive one to a skeptical one by questioning 'colonial modernity.' Modernity came to be regarded as an era that suppressed human rights and freedom, and the uncritical positive view of modernity, which prioritized development as the primary goal, disappeared (Miyajima Hiroshi et al. 2004, 249). Korea's democratization proceeded by reclaiming the 'right to interpret national history' from the dictatorial government to the populace, based on a history with the populace as the subject, and the critical juncture in this interpretation was precisely the issue of how to view modernity.

As issues such as forced conscription and comfort women symbolize human rights issues intertwined with history, their victims have become symbols of 'human rights violations' memories, strongly linked with the emotion of having their dignity violated, integrated with the value of human rights. This phenomenon, where past victims become symbols of democracy as an ideal to be eternally pursued, continues to this day, following the institutional democratization of multi-party systems and freedom of the press. While modern Japan, in imitating the West, has presented development and progress as achievements of democracy, Korea's democratization has progressed in a way that links resistance to the logic of modernity and civilization itself with the logic of human rights, leading to repeated scrutiny of the negative aspects of modernity and civilization (Miyajima Hiroshi et al. 2004). In line with this, extreme historical friction is occurring between the emotional sentiments of the Japanese people, formed within Japan's democratic political system linked solely to the value of economic affluence, and the emotional sentiments of the Korean people.

Looking back at Korea's democratization, which peaked in 1987, 'Perceptions of Post-Liberation History' (edited by Song Gun-ho et al., published by Hangilsa), published in six volumes from 1997, can be said to have researched the reasons why the values of human rights, which existed at the time of the Republic of Korea's founding, were lost, by appealing to human rights values in the past. It reconstructed human rights and freedom as values to be recovered within modern history. It focused on explaining the dynamics by which the space liberated by the 'liberation from Japanese imperialism' was transformed into a space of oppression under the United States or the Cold War order, and historically elucidated the origins of authoritarian dictatorial governments and the division of the nation, which dictators used as a basis for claiming legitimacy. It can be seen as presenting a historical interpretation that overcomes development, advocated by the Park Chung-hee regime and subsequent military regimes, and the suppression of human rights justified by it.

Furthermore, 'A People's History of Korea (Modern Period, 1945-1980)' (translated by Takasaki Soji, published by the Korean People's History Research Association, 1987), which appeared in Korea in 1985, identified the fundamental cause of the stagnation of Korean modern history, viewed through the value of development, in the suppression of freedom linked to human rights. It first expanded the scope of history to the Joseon Dynasty, combining 'historical inevitability' based on productivity with human subjective freedom (p. 316), and provided the logic that the 'germs' for modernization existed but were suppressed by imperialism. This had the effect of explaining the nation's 'identity,' viewed through the value of development, by the logic that the free development of the nation was suppressed. In other words, by placing the people's autonomy and freedom at the forefront, it created a historical interpretation that did not apply the logic of civilization linked to the value of development, thereby transforming the meaning of modernity itself. The democratization process created a new framework for historical interpretation that merged with human rights norms.

However, the historical memories linked to past development have not completely disappeared. Unlike in South Africa or South America, new historical memories further fuel divisions within Korea. Korean history based on the logic of civilization and modernity, symbolized by 'Anti-Japan, Tribalism' (Lee Young-hoon, Munye Chuncho, 2019), still persists in some parts of the Korean conservative spectrum, and this, in conjunction with Japanese right-wing conservatives, maintains its lineage, complicating disputes over history within Korea and across the borders between Japan and Korea.

2. Democratization as a Process of Reorganizing Values and Memories: The Struggle for and Establishment of Historical Interpretation Rights and East Asia

What values can be said to underpin the historical memories shared by the Japanese nation? This will be examined using the response to the comfort women issue as an example.

In Korea, in response to the democratization movement since the 1980s, movements aimed at improving the social status of women, who have been relegated to subordinate positions in society, have unfolded around the values of women's dignity and human rights, in the form of opposition to patriarchy and sex tourism.[6] From the late 1980s to the early 1990s, Japan showed a response that considerably considered the value of human rights, stating that it must also face its responsibility as perpetrator (Asano Toyomi 2015). However, on the other hand, there was a condition that such measures must be consistent with past treaties and policies. To maintain consistency with past laws and regulations while considering the value of human rights, 'moral measures' were devised, specifically through the establishment of a foundation in cooperation between the government and the private sector.

This foundation was criticized as a so-called 'people's fund,' but it was premised on the cooperation of collecting funds from the people and the government delivering them to the victims. In other words, to ensure consistency, the government took responsibility for the series of tasks for actual fundraising and the associated expenses (hiring staff, foundation land costs, travel expenses, publicity costs) while maintaining the form of past gratuitous economic cooperation through public fundraising. (Wada Haruki 2016; Onuma Yasuo 2017). Furthermore, when the fundraising fell short of the prescribed amount, the government covered the budget from its medical and welfare support projects, thus adopting a method that, while government-led, maintained the form of public-private cooperation to ensure consistency and balanced responses to both the value of human rights and the stability and development based on past treaties.

However, this method sparked a debate that divided civil society, and ultimately, as it was not accepted by the victims in Korea, and due to the demands of civil society that unilaterally asserted the value of human rights based on transnational networks,[7]the South Korean government was ultimately compelled to accept it through litigation. As a result, distrust towards the South Korean government grew not only among the Japanese public but also among government officials. It can be said that the distrust intensified as much as the administrative deliberations and efforts were made in the past. The tension in Korea-Japan relations escalated as the South Korean government's demands were perceived as aggressively 'moving the goalposts.'

Today, for Japanese diplomatic officials, the apologies and truth-seeking demanded by the comfort women victims are no longer framed as issues of victim relief intertwined with the value of women's dignity as a human rights value, but solely as an issue of interpreting the Korea-Japan Claims Settlement Agreement and Economic Cooperation Agreement.

The background to the point where consistency with international treaties and compliance with international treaties became the sole criteria for judgment also includes the fact that the comfort women issue, raised in Korea in the early 1990s, brought up the issue of compensation from the Japanese government to Japanese women and civilians, including Red Cross nurses and Japanese comfort women. In other words, Japan also had historical victims, but they were treated as issues of relief for those detached from the values of development and peace within Japan. While a certain amount of subsidy was provided as consolation money, viewed through the value of development, to Red Cross nurses and those detained in Siberia, the logic that 'human rights victims' were already compensated was reinforced.

In other words, the approach of moral measures and their institutionalization, as seen in the establishment of the Asian Women's Fund in the early 1990s, was rejected by a segment of transnational civil society, leading to the loss of political ground within Japan, except for a very small number of people who could recognize 'colonial responsibility' as a problem of human rights violations within the framework of people's history.

The gap in perception widened due to the approach that prioritized values such as growth and development, and compliance with treaties and international law supporting them, over human rights. This can be seen as a division among citizens regarding the polarized democratic values of human rights and development, and a division in the positions of the Korean and Japanese governments linked to these values. From the perspective of radical civil society, the establishment of a foundation through public-private cooperation based on legal consistency by the Japanese side was merely a measure to obscure the 'state responsibility' towards the victims of 'imperialist aggression.'

II. The Structure of Conflict Surrounding the Issue: Resonance of Domestic and International Politics

1. Historical issues originate from differences in the status of the constructed nation

What lay behind the situation of division within civil society? This stems from the fact that even citizens, who should have no borders, inevitably live as members of a nation in their concrete, real-life spaces. The state, as a unit that provides competition and resources in terms of language, education, fostering new industries, and security, and the nation as its subject and constituent members, are indispensable. Even if they profess the same universal values of democracy and human rights, the selection of memories essential for constructing the national groups of Korea and Japan, respectively, is linked to different values, as mentioned above. Furthermore, because the historical memory of liberation from 'the other' to achieve freedom is shared by the Korean people, the meaning of imperial rule and war against Japan, which sought to annihilate the nation based on assimilation policies, is always at the core of Korean national memory. On the other hand, at the core of Japanese national memory is the war with the Anglo-American powers, symbolized by the 70th anniversary statement of the war's end, and a reflection on Japan's attempt to resolve it through force. The 70th anniversary statement mentioned two issues as policy errors: the violation of the principle of peaceful dispute resolution and betrayal of the principle of self-determination of peoples. However, the annexation of Korea was not included as a case of violation of self-determination, as in the Japanese national memory, democracy has developed in light of the value of development, and in this context, the period from the Manchurian Incident in 1931 to World War II is given only the meaning of 'deviation due to the rise of militarism.'

In this situation, the structure of historical issues arising between Korea and Japan can be summarized as follows. The value of human rights and human dignity, as well as the 'freedom' essential for social justice and its realization, naturally presuppose each other. On the other hand, the values of civilization and modernity naturally presuppose legal stability and order, and the 'affluence' and development built upon them. While both values are originally complementary—both the development of society as a whole and the freedom and human rights of individuals within society are indispensable and complementary—in the historical issues between Korea and Japan, a tendency has emerged where Japan emphasizes the former and Korea emphasizes the latter, leading to confrontation using different memories and logics. This can be said to be the social function of historical memory.

For example, according to the historical interpretation that emerged with democratization in Korean society, comfort women victims were symbols to condemn not only the rule of Japanese imperialism, which should not have existed historically, but also the dictatorial regime. They became victims who could easily evoke empathy to expose the remnants of the past that should have been overcome and liquidated during the democratization process. In line with domestic democratization, not only comfort women but also current forced conscription issues have become targets for exposing the corruption of past Korea-Japan relations. As the actual victims evoke significant national empathy, public distrust towards Japan, which refuses to respond to their relief by using treaties as a shield and does not actively respond to the third-party compensation plan proposed by Korea, increases. The issue of relief for comfort women and forced conscription victims, intertwined with the legal framework for the origin and termination of colonial rule, constitutes historical issues that involve the memories and values supporting the legitimacy of the national societies and domestic politics of both sides, as well as their interpretations.

To address these conflicts, researchers and citizens themselves must recognize their emotions as members of a nation, consider the dynamics of the other party's emotions in relation to memory and values, and as elements that create a national society, and deepen their shared understanding of the causes.

2. The System of Emotion and Memory in Democratic Societies: Causes and Status of Resonance

Based on the problem awareness described above, this section aims to organize the structure of emotional conflict regarding historical issues by connecting domestic and international politics.

In what way are the collective emotional memories, conscious and unconscious, that establish the nation as a group connected to domestic and international political systems?

In the domestic political structure of a democratic society, the ultimate decision-making unit is the sovereign people. However, for this premise to hold, we must consider what constitutes 'the people.' The people share subjective emotions and the memories that create them. Even the rule of majority vote, a principle of rational democracy, cannot function without the people as emotional beings. This is because the question of who constitutes the group cannot be democratically decided. For democracy to function, the responsible persons or groups must be determined according to the situation of the place, whether it be a corporation or a local government. This is because democracy has the destiny of having to decide the group's will by a certain group of constituents (Kawasaki Osamu & Sugita Atsushi 2006). The reluctant acquiescence and adherence of the minority to decisions made by majority vote is also based on the shared consciousness within the group of belonging to the same group. The group called 'the people' is also a vast, invisible group, but as long as it embraces democracy, it cannot avoid the characteristic of being an exclusionary group. Therefore, shared emotions as members of the group are essential, even if only formally, in rituals. In a political system predicated on democracy under a constitution that allows for changes in government, it is important for the members of the group called 'the people' to have the same emotions and consciousness; only then can decisions made by 'people's representatives' or by majority vote among representatives be established.[8] The deliberative process of dialogue and persuasion based on freedom of the press is also possible only when, in addition to language, there is a shared emotion indicated by the consciousness and memories of being members of the same group and protecting the group's existence and values (Chantal Mouffe 2006, 9).

In East Asia, what has rapidly enabled the cultivation of such national sentiment is the memory corresponding to the 'history' of the nation, which has supplied meaning to individual lives. When the consciousness that the nation is noble and meaningful is supported by historical education that easily expresses past glories, the 'individual' becomes a 'national' who shares a certain degree of national sentiment along with language, and simultaneously becomes a 'citizen' who socially shares the morality that governs the individual. Even in countries like the United States, where national memories symbolized by Washington and Lincoln are indispensable in presidential inaugural addresses and ceremonies, the people, who consider freedom as the core of national sentiment, share historical memories (Anthony Smith 1999).

At the heart of national memory and the stories that easily construct it, namely history, lie universal values that show contrasting aspects between Korea and Japan. As stated earlier, Japan tends to emphasize values such as 'development,' 'modernization,' and 'peace,' while Korea emphasizes values such as 'human rights,' 'dignity,' and 'freedom' (the opposite of 'oppression'). In Japan, the story shared in textbooks is that despite the nation's development being hindered by discriminatory treaties that treated its people unfairly, it ultimately achieved treaty revision, won the Sino-Japanese and Russo-Japanese Wars, was recognized as a major power, and succeeded in modernization and development. In Korea, the story that has become central to national history is that despite oppression through the massacre of righteous armies and human rights violations, the nation did not lose its subjectivity and resisted even under 'occupation' after the Russo-Japanese War, eventually achieving independence. When considering that the people are recognized in the world and are precious individuals, the national memories of the two countries, in simplified terms, are in a state where two universalist values appear to be in conflict, driven by each country's modernization and human rights, respectively.

However, despite being linked to such different universal values, the commonality of national memories is that they provide historical legitimacy to the political activities of the people and specific political forces, by connecting a 'proud' present 'us' with a 'unforgivable' and precarious past.

In this context, while the development and protection of human rights were complementary in the nation-states of the United States and Western countries, in East Asia, particularly in Korea and Japan, which achieved rapid state-led modernization, these two values have become antagonistic. Normally, the affluence of modernity should support individual autonomy and independence, but it has resulted in affluence being prioritized over individual human rights by a strong state. Furthermore, since human rights victims are remembered as casualties of wars initiated by the state, the two values can become polarized around the existence of a state that is simultaneously the origin of development and the perpetrator of injustice. The state is seen as the source of affluence on the one hand, and the ringleader of oppression on the other, leading to debates within Korea and Japan, and polarizing the positions of the people of both countries in historical issues between them.

3. The Structure of National Sentiment Conflict Due to Resonance

Next, we will discuss from the perspective of resonance in domestic and international politics why the two universal values are combined with different memories between Korea and Japan, accelerating the confrontation over historical issues.

We have already explained that national sentiment arises from shared memories, that the collective entity of a nation exists through this sharing, and that domestic democracy functions based on it. However, the universal values essential for emotionalizing these memories function as an element of national soft power independently of the domestic political structure because they are universal in the international community. Therefore, disputes over memories are thought to take the form of a struggle for soft power resources in international politics, leading to what is called a history war.

In such a situation, conflicts over history in the international community, escalated to an emotional level, also influence domestic political trends. That is, as the struggle over memories concerning justice and values in the international community flows back into domestic politics, the political legitimacy of a more hardline leader, one who is 'righteous' from a domestic perspective, increases. In other words, more votes are concentrated, leading to a strengthening of populist phenomena.

The so-called 'historical perception issue' is characterized by the co-emergence of domestic and international political problems. In this context, peace studies and international law are generally captured by the domestic political and cultural structure, becoming politicized and aligned with the sense of justice of one side rather than resolving disputes. The more South Korea insists on the principle of victim relief derived from peace studies, the more Japan asserts that the issue has been resolved based on the general logic and development principles of international law between equal subjects.

Why do the universal values that unconsciously underpin national sentiment and memory, when they manifest as entirely different strata between Korea and Japan within the domestic socio-political structure, cause conflict in international politics?

The first reason is related to the cause of the stratification. The collective entity of the 'nation,' which should possess sovereignty, was by no means self-evident in East Asia until about 150 years ago and has been artificially created by political necessity (Nishikawa Chōfū 2012). Movements appealing for national solidarity, selecting memories appropriate to escaping a subordinate position in global and regional international relations and reinforcing them with universal values, have been carried out by independence activists and authoritarian governments that monopolized founding myths, such as the 'hanbatsu' (clan cliques), military, and political parties.

Because the nation has been constructed through history, the combination of memories and emotions generated in that process attempts to clearly portray the image of neighboring nations as the opposite of one's own. For example, Japan views Korea as associated with 'stagnation' as the opposite of development, while Korea views Japan as having an imperialist national character that casually suppresses human rights and freedom. Each defines the other in conjunction with values that are the opposite of those cherished in its own history. This structure may be the reason why Japanese people find it difficult to recognize their colonial responsibility of ruling neighboring countries and attempting to make their people Japanese citizens, and why Korean people find it difficult to recognize the modern character of their nation or people separately from imperialist logic.

The second reason can be attributed to the expansion and penetration of human rights norms in the international community, where Korea underwent a new formation of nationhood through its democratization process, while Japan remained outside this wave. The democratization wave, which spread globally from the end of the Cold War as the 'Third Wave,' reached Asia from the late 1980s, not just South America and South Africa. What occurred in Korea as democratization progressed was the emergence of historical interpretations based on a new concept of the populace and the combination of such memories with universal values such as human rights, democracy, and freedom. However, unlike the economic development that did not progress well in South America and South Africa, Korea achieved growth as an advanced nation. Therefore, Korea's historical memory lies between the two values of development and human rights.

Meanwhile, this wave of Asian democratization did not reach Japan, and regime changes in Japan did not involve a shift in historical perception, nor were they sustained. The Japanese people can be said to remain integrated solely by the values of 19th-century civilization, modernization, and development. The value of affluence combined with democracy in Japan has become one with the discourse of being Asia's pioneer in modernization and civilization, and has been integrated with the LDP government, which has prioritized distributing benefits to industries and organizations (Sato Seizaburo and Matsuzaki Tetsuhisa 1986). Although the symbolic imperial system clearly functions by approaching citizens whose freedom and human rights have been deprived due to disasters or injustices, the end of World War II through the 'Five-Article Oath' and the 'Sacred Decision' is nevertheless associated with the memory of restoring peace to the people, holding significance as a turning point for modernization and economic development. Memories based on individual values such as human rights and freedom only emerge in fragmented phenomena such as the Freedom and People's Rights Movement of the Meiji era or the 'Occupation Reforms.' The dynamic that marginalizes phenomena friendly to human rights values in Japan's historical memory is similar to how Korea subordinates the logic of development and civilization to the logic of human rights, such as imperialist oppression and the freedom and resistance of the populace, through the concept of the nascent 'modernity' suppressed by imperialist oppression.

Furthermore, these emotionally charged conflicts attract the attention of commercial media, which favor them as sensational and rating-boosting subjects, thereby accelerating the conflict. While media demand for commentary on the domestic political situations of the opposing party is high, a comprehensive approach to 'historical perception issues' becomes increasingly difficult (Tsuchiya Reiko 2021).

Conclusion: The Emergence of Historical Issues as a Result of Resonance and Their Vicious Cycle

As such, the issue of relieving victims' suffering within domestic and international political structures is certainly a human rights issue that the entire international community should pay attention to. However, it also causes conflict and accelerates the vicious cycle by creating a dispute over which should be the mainstream in the international community: this human rights issue or the 'easily understandable' history that should be shared by the people. This can be considered the fundamental cause of historical issues.

The current situation, where historical issues between Korea and Japan are incessant even within democratic societies, has a historical background where the Korean 'victims' are not directly linked to universal values such as human rights or freedom, but rather become polarized with the support of civic groups, connecting through the memories shared by the Korean people, which further complicates the situation. This is why the main body of this paper points to a stratification in nation-building as the background of historical issues. In Korea's case, there exists a social structure where the nation is formed by combining memories of resistance with the universal value of human rights, while in Japan, strong emotional backlash arises from the combination of values such as development and stability with memories intertwined with Japanese democracy.

By understanding the history that generates strong emotions as a dynamic relationship between memories that have become integrated with economic and social systems and their processes of change, and the values that select these memories, the key to overcoming this situation lies in first recognizing the existence of emotions operating within each party and then transforming them together through dialogue.

This is because only by being aware of one's own living emotions and the values and memories that support them can one see what is not visible in the opposite sense. In Korea, the universal value of 'human rights victims' and 'women's dignity' overlaps with national values at the core of national memory, positioning Korean comfort women, while in Japan's national memory, the omission of events and figures related to 'colonial responsibility' can be understood as an extension of the discussions so far.

The path to embracing universal values, which are prone to polarization, for all parties involved begins with looking inward, not outward, from each party's shared, correct memories. In a situation where values are polarized, different memories inherently mean that each side wants to see history differently. However, while considering such phenomena, it is necessary to deeply accept the 'entirety' of the 'light and dark' aspects of the past within the framework of each nation's history. That is, while remembering the unfortunate war era as 'darkness' without forgetting it, it is necessary to be able to perceive both the light and dark aspects at a higher level, not simply by praising modernity and development that support Japan's national pride as 'light.' Only then can a path be opened to empathize by considering the values and memories that underpin the pride of the Korean people. In other words, by being conscious of the 'entirety' of light and dark, a foundation for solidarity that considers the other party can be built upon individual self-awareness and national consciousness.

Humans can connect across national borders as citizens, but they also bear the fate of having to live within borders as members of a nation and as agents of democracy. Therefore, by being aware of the memories shared as a nation and the values that support them, and by also turning our attention to the 'dark' memories that could not become mainstream domestically, we must understand why stratification exists to create possibilities for solidarity and empathy. Only when a common understanding of the origins of historical issues deepens will the day come when we can discuss common policies to awaken emotions. ■

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[1]  Asano Toyomi. 2021. While existing research attempts to discuss the fault lines of nation-building by separating values and memories, this paper further develops that approach.

[2]  With a few exceptions, Kimura Kan points out the divergence of historical views on the modern history of both Japan and Korea. The 'internal development theory,' which emerged in Japan with a generational shift and spread to Korea, is being discussed, but it is regrettable that the detailed analysis of conceptual and theoretical changes and generational shifts leads to a decline in 'Japan's importance.' This paper is developed with the awareness of the need to deepen hermeneutic discussion by connecting it with trends in philosophy and thought related to changes in society as a whole (Kimura Kan 2010).

[3]  Among the causes is realist international relations theory, symbolized by national interest and national power. However, the problem lies in the fact that concepts related to domestic political systems, such as democratic norms where the 'sovereign state' is controlled by the 'nation' through the election of representatives, or authoritarian regimes on the opposite side, are considered to be on a different level from the concepts that serve as the major premises in international relations theory, and there has been no approach connecting them.

[4]  Examples of such organizations and foundations include the 'Justice Memory Solidarity' and the 'History, Memory, Reconciliation Foundation'.

[5]  We would like to receive opinions from readers regarding the basic problem awareness, problematic aspects, and methods of discussion in the academic field generally referred to as 'reconciliation studies.' For the subsequent discussion, which is still in its early stages, please refer to *Sōsho: Reconciliation Studies, Volume 1: Attempts at Reconciliation Studies—Memory, Emotion, Value* (Akashi Shoten, 2021).

[6]  Within the currents of the Korean feminist movement, comfort women victims were positioned as daughters of the nation, symbols of oppressed women's human rights, and emerged in a way that appealed to the nation's memory. That is, in Korea, while appealing to the universal human right of women's dignity, the comfort women, as symbolized by their early slogans, were positioned within a traditional family-centric national historical narrative as daughters who suffered the greatest damage in the history of a nation long subjected to invasions by neighboring countries.

[7]  Wada Haruki 2016; Ōnuma Yasuaki 2017. The following provides records of symposiums by civic groups that attempted to cooperate with the Japanese government, showing the loss of civil solidarity due to differences in attitudes toward the government on issues such as the comfort women problem and the treatment of Zainichi Koreans. Bipartisan cooperation seems to have been barely achieved with the tacit approval of radical forces in both countries. Seo Kyung-sik 1989.

[8]  The collective entity of the nation is reproduced through education. Democracy, based on deliberation and the principle of majority rule, can only function on the premise of a shared collective consciousness. It is on the premise of belonging to the same group and sharing moral sentiments as members of that group that the majority can show maximum consideration for the minority, and the minority, by refraining from resorting to violence, allows democracy to function effectively.

■ Author: ASANO Toyomi_Professor at the Faculty of Political Science and Economics, Waseda University. He has been lecturing on Japanese Political History and International Relations at Waseda University since 2015. He received his Ph.D. from the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, University of Tokyo, in 1998. He was a visiting researcher at the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences (GSAS), Harvard University, from 1994 to 1995, and a visiting scholar at the Harvard-Yenching Institute from 2021 to 2022. He has been a visiting scholar at the Institute of Modern History, Academia Sinica, Taiwan (1999), the Sigur Center in Elliott School, George Washington University (2006-2007), and the Institute for East Asian Studies, Korea University (2009). He was a fellow at the Woodrow Wilson Center in 2015. His book *Teikoku Nihon no Shokuminchi Hōsei* [Colonial Legal System of Imperial Japan] received the Yoshida Shigeru Prize in March 2009 and the 25th Ōhira Masayoshi Memorial Prize in June of the same year. He received the Minister of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology Award for Science and Technology (Research Category) in 2022.

■ Editor: PARK Han-soo_EAI Research Fellow

Inquiries: 02-2277-1683 (ext. 204) hspark@eai.or.kr

Attachment: [Future Vision of Japan-Korea Cooperation] XII. Resonance of Domestic and International Politics Regarding the Fault Lines of Nation-Building and Historical Reconciliation.pdf