Seoul and Tokyo have worked out a deal at the expense of South Korean exiles in Japan. After weeks of anti-Japanese demonstrations in South Korea and speculation that President Park Chung Hee might break diplomatic relations with Japan, Japanese special envoy Etsusaburo Shiina flew to Seoul September 19. He brought expressions of regret over the August 15 attempted assassination of Park by a Korean resident of Japan. Park’s wife was killed in the shooting.

Park considered the written apology from Japanese Premier Kakuei Tanaka insufficient, so Shiina supplemented it with an oral statement. He also visited Park’s wife’s grave to pay his respects.

Park finally accepted the effusive apologies – but not without receiving something more substantial than mere words.

Park had accused North Korea of masterminding the assassination attempt and blamed Tokyo for allowing it to take place. The would-be assassin, Mun Se Kwang, had entered South Korea on a false Japanese passport, with a gun stolen from a Japanese police station.

But these weren’t the real points at issue. Park’s security service had been uncharacteristically lax itself. At the invitation-only ceremony at the National Theater, where the attempt took place, Mun somehow eluded 297 police and security agents outside and 251 inside. According to the September 3 Washington Post he even had to climb over a plainclothes policeman sitting next to him before running down the aisle to shoot.

What really enraged Park was the fact that Tokyo has not been able to suppress the activities of the influential General Association of Korean Residents in Japan, the Chosen Soren. The majority of the 625,000 Koreans living in Japan are opposed to Park’s regime, and many are sympathetic to North Korea. Park has repeatedly pressed Tokyo to crack down on them. Mun was a member of a youth league associated with Chosen Soren.

Park was further incensed at statements made during the crisis by Japanese Foreign Minister Toshio Kimura. Kimura stated in the Japanese Diet August 29 that he believed there was no North Korean military threat to South Korea. On September 5 he challenged the Republic of Korea’s claim to “sole legitimacy” in representing the entire Korean peninsula.

Park presented five demands to the Japanese Embassy in an official note delivered September 2 by Foreign Minister Kim Dong Jo. The key demand, according to a report in the September 3 issue of the Tokyo Daily Yomiuri, was for Japan to bring under control the “criminal” and “subversive” activities of Chosen Soren and other anti-Park organizations in Japan.

Park also demanded an official apology for the assassination attempt; the extradition to Seoul of three alleged accomplices of the assassin; full cooperation in investigating the “plot”; and correction of alleged prejudiced and unfair reports unfavorable to South Korea’s national interest in the Japanese press.

To back up these demands, daily demonstrations were held outside the Japanese Embassy in Seoul. Thousands of demonstrators tried to storm the embassy, and on September 6 about 200 succeeded in breaking in. They tore down the Japanese flag on top of the five-story building, ransacked offices, set an embassy car afire, and shattered all the windows on the first floor. The embassy staff barricaded themselves in the basement and on the fourth and fifth floors.

One of the men who tore down the flag tried to commit hara-kiri. At a demonstration September 9, thirty-two demonstrators cut off their little fingers with kitchen knives.

Demonstrations were also held in other South Korean cities. Korean police claimed that more than 700,000 had demonstrated in Seoul alone.

It soon became apparent to everyone that the demonstrations were not spontaneous affairs but had been carefully organized by the Park regime.

“According to the police,” the September 13 New York Times reported, “the demonstrations are planned a day or two ahead and the script worked out between the demonstrators and the police protecting the embassy. Television coverage is coordinated, so that the cameras can get the best shot of the action.”

The Tokyo daily Yomiuri Shimbun reported September 14 that demonstrators had been recruited by the government, with fines of 500 won (US$1.25) levied on those who refused to go. As one Korean living in Japan told a New Asia News correspondent, “South Korean people don’t have the freedom not to go to demonstrations.”

Apart from the staged demonstrations, Park exerted pressure in other ways. The September 11 Tokyo Mainichi Daily News reported that “labor disputes” were affecting thirty-three of 167 Japanese-owned firms in South Korea. Strikes are normally illegal in Park’s Korea.

Undoubtedly there is much genuine resentment of Japan. The memory of more than three decades of direct colonial rule by Japan from 1910 to 1945 has not been erased, and Japanese imperialism today has control over a sizable chunk of the Korean economy. But the demonstrations were orchestrated by Park for different reasons, and the limits were strictly set. The September 23 New York Times, for example, reported that students were not permitted to join the demonstrations ‘because of fear that they would turn against the Government.”

The background of Japanese special envoy Shiina shows that Park has no basic conflict with Japanese imperialism. “As Assistant Secretary in the War Ministry,” New Asia News reported, “Shiina helped draft the plan to conscript more than one million Koreans to work in Japanese industry during World War II. Moreover it was Shiina who after the war wrote that ‘if Japan’s control over Korea is to be called imperialism, it is a glorious imperialism.’“ Park would have faced many problems if he had carried through his threatened diplomatic break with Japan. The September 15 New York Times reported that between 1965 and the end of 1973, Japan provided 26 percent of all the foreign funds going into South Korea, second only to the United States’ 37.8 percent. Japan also took 33.4 percent of South Korean exports in the first six months of 1974 – almost as much as the 34.7 percent taken by the United States.

Washington was concerned at the falling out of its two Asian allies and apparently played a part in working out the final deal. U. S. diplomats had a number of secret meetings with representatives of the South Korean government. In addition. State Department officials reported September 3 that President Ford was sending a letter to Park, urging him to use “selfrestraint” in his treatment of dissidents and expressing concern over the deterioration of relations between Japan and South Korea.

The September 15 New York Times reported that the White House also pressured Park with threats of economic reprisals and possible troop withdrawals. U. S. officials pointed out, according to the Times, that Seoul’s position in the coming United Nations debate on the UN Command in South Korea was “already difficult and that the absence of Japanese support would do major damage.”

The agreement reached between Seoul and Tokyo has been touted as a “compromise,” but the result is likely to be something fully desired by both governments – an attempt to suppress the political activities of Koreans in Japan.

The Japanese statement delivered to Park apologized for the fact that the assassination attempt was prepared in Japan and promised to make “every effort” to prevent its happening again. It also pledged to crack down on ‘criminal acts aiming at the overthrow of the government of the Republic of Korea.” Such pledges can only be implemented by following Park’s lead and stepping up repression of Koreans living in Japan.

Source: https://www.themilitant.com/Intercontinental_Press/1974/IP1237.pdf#page=16&view=FitV,35