Park Chung Hee Era

by Byung-kook Kim

  [constrain him]. If the newspapers oppose, Park can be expected to seal

  [ fuzuru] them off.”11

  Kishi had been at the forefront of the Japanese conservatives’ initiative to cultivate a close relationship with South Korea. This time, spurred on by the emergence of a pragmatic military junta, he argued strongly for a speedy settlement of the property claims in order not to jeopardize Japan’s future security interests. In his eyes, the collapse of Park’s military junta might give way to the rise of anti-Japanese political forces in South Korea.

  In an unambiguous way, Kishi explained his rationale for working closely with the junta:

  Imagine what it would be like for Japan if communists were able to stretch their influence all the way down to Pusan . . . The reason that our forefathers, at least from the Meiji period onward, went through so much trouble over the Korean Peninsula—[including the waging of] the Sino-Japanese War [1894–

  1895] and the Russo-Japanese War [1904–1905]—was not because of their imperialistic ambitions, but because of their concern for Japan’s security that has always faced the dreaded possibility of hostile forces emerging in [the Korean Peninsula] . . . This is why Japan must normalize diplomatic relations with South Korea, provide substantial economic aid along with the United States, and thereby help build South Korea’s economic foundation . . . If we do not do anything and allow Park to fail, most grave consequences will follow. Now is not the time to sit idly by.12

  The specter of a “red flag fluttering over Pusan” (pusan chôkkiron) had been frequently raised by Japanese conservatives to justify their call for diplomatic normalization with South Korea. This time, with the sense of uncertainty, opportunity, and urgency ushered in by the military coup, Kishi worked to mobilize LDP support for the normalization of relations.

  By identifying his security worries with the geopolitical concerns of Japan tracing back to the Meiji period, Kishi defined his South Korea policy to be in line with Japan’s traditional policy toward the Asian continent.

  Concurring with him was KÃnà IchirÃ, the agricultural minister and a major LDP faction leader. Not a usual South Korea hand, but an expert on

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  the Soviet Union and, to a lesser extent, China, KÃnà became interested in the normalization talks primarily as part of Japan’s regional policy to counter the Soviet and Chinese threats. In his talks with Ikeda, KÃnà advised: “We have before us the best chance since the end of the war to resolve the Japanese–South Korean problem. Undergoing a serious economic crisis, South Korea is in most urgent need of money. Now is the time to negotiate.”13 KÃnà also urged that Sugi Michisuke, a business magnate from the Kansai area and the chairman of the Japan External Trade Organization (JETRO), head the Japanese delegation to the sixth round of normalization talks scheduled to begin in October 1961.14

  For Prime Minister Ikeda Hayato, however, cooperating with Park was not as easy as it was made out to be by KÃnà and Kishi. First, Ikeda was not yet convinced of the military junta’s ability to put its house in order and overcome its political challenges. Second, he was unsure of his own ability to align Japanese public opinion behind the negotiation of the claims issue. The situation was also not helped by Park’s authoritarian style of rule, which had the effect of bringing together the Japanese opposition parties, press, and intelligentsia, as well as the more liberal elements within the LDP, to oppose any political deals with what they regarded as a repressive military regime. There were in addition Japanese leftists who had organized a Liaison Council in January 1961 to coordinate their campaign against the normalization of relations with South Korea on the grounds that it would entail the danger of getting dragged into a U.S.-

  centric military network in East Asia and maybe even an unwanted military conflict.15 The council consisted of representatives from the Japanese Communist Party, the Japanese Socialist Party, the General Council of Trade Unions (Sohyo), and the Japan–North Korea Association, among other political and social organizations. In such a context of domestic political polarization, it was the United States that had to step in to push Ikeda to the negotiating table.

  Early Overtures

  In October 1961, under the direction of Park, Kim Chong-p’il made a secret trip to meet with Ikeda Hayato to arrange Park’s state visit to Japan on his way to Washington the following month. Kim used the trip to widen South Korea’s points of contact in Japan, meeting unofficially with Kishi Nobusuke, Ishii MitsujirÃ, Satà Eisaku, KÃnà IchirÃ, and òno Bamboku.

  This was the first of many informal meetings Kim was to have with the leaders of the Japanese Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) through the course

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  of the normalization talks. Park had high hopes for a speedy settlement. By sending the most diverse and certainly the largest ever delegation to the negotiations, Park showed his readiness to cover all areas of contention.

  The junta leader had U.S. secretary of state Dean Rusk as a friendly mediator. With North Korea concluding mutual defense treaties with the Soviet Union and China, respectively, in July 1961,16 Rusk took on the role of mediator between Seoul and Tokyo, visiting Japan in November 1961 to meet with Ikeda to persuade him of the importance of seeking an early settlement with South Korea. Rusk urged Japan to share with the United States the burden of financing South Korea’s economic development programs by seeing to the resolution of the property claims.17 By contrast, Ikeda explained to Rusk the difficulties of cooperating with South Korea: The [Japanese] opposition parties, including the Democratic Socialist Party, are strongly against spending vast sums of money to settle the claims issue.

  Whereas in South Korea the military regime can put into effect its decisions instantly, in Japan things have to be put through the Diet proceedings. It is simply not possible for us to do things in the way they do them . . . We run the risk of going through a security treaty crisis all over again [like the one in 1960 provoked by the United States–Japan Mutual Security Treaty].18

  Before the meeting was over, however, Ikeda came to agree with Rusk that he would try his best to help South Korea’s economic development and to settle many of the outstanding differences between the two countries. The Japanese prime minister sensed that the United States looked at his South Korea policy as a testing ground for Japan’s commitment to the U.S.-Japanese security alliance and to the principle of burden sharing in regional geopolitics. Aware of what was at stake, Ikeda replied that he would begin serious negotiations with the new military regime in South Korea.19 Ikeda backed the resumption of normalization talks started in October 1961 and consented to hold a meeting with Park. For the junta chairman, who needed to demonstrate to his people that the military coup had the backing of the international community, Ikeda’s show of interest was a positive development that could help consolidate his power base.

  On November 11, less than three weeks after Kim Chong-p’il’s secret trip to Japan, Park made the first official trip to Japan by a South Korean head of state in the postwar period.20 Before his departure, Park simply expressed his hope to have “frank talks” with the Japanese.21 Once in Japan, he did not shy away from giving his positive views on Japan at the risk of alienating South Korean domestic political forces. At the state banquet hosted by Ikeda Hayato on the day of his arrival, Park pleasantly surprised the Japanese by arguing that “it would be neither wise nor beneficial to

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  dwell on the [colonial] past and . . . both nations should try their utmost to promote cooperation for common goals and ideals.”22 The next day, speaking to Kishi Nobusuke, Ishii MitsujirÃ, and other senior LDP leaders, Park did not hide his admiration for the Meiji modernizers, and reaffirmed his commitment to the construction of a “rich nation, strong army” in the same way that the Meiji leaders had done.23 Deeply moved by Park’s respect for Japanese ethos and history, one of the attending LDP leaders lik-ened Park to the ishin no s
hishi (Meiji patriots).

  Park was committed to concluding an agreement should there arise an opportunity to make a deal on the spot. However, despite Ikeda’s public commitment to an early settlement, Park found the Japanese prime minister to be extremely cautious in the face of increasing domestic pressure to call off the normalization talks with Park. The Japanese public became agitated over Park’s use of force to silence the South Korean opposition.

  Even within the LDP, an anti-treaty camp emerged to make it difficult for Ikeda to forge a forward-looking South Korea policy, especially since the opponents included major LDP leaders like the minister of international trade and industry, Satà Eisaku, and the finance minister, Mizuta Mikio.

  Satà Eisaku was particularly vehement in his opposition to the settlement of the property claims issue, apparently trying to prevent his political rival, Ikeda, from accomplishing a major diplomatic feat. The opposition of Mizuta Mikio was another headache for Park, because he headed the Finance Ministry in charge of dispensing state money and regulating banks and nonbank financial institutions. Mizuta could slow down, if not block, the normalization talks.

  The visit of November 1961 did not result in substantive breakthroughs on the issues of normalization. The Japanese press remained mostly uninterested in Park’s visit, giving only scant coverage to the Park-Ikeda meeting, while repeating the existing Japanese demand that the two countries should deal with the issues of property claims and reparations from an

  “economic” rather than from a “political” perspective. By emphasizing the economics rather than the politics of the issues of property claims, the Japanese were arguing that the size of reparations would be much smaller than Park hoped. With the Japanese press and public outlook unchanged,24 Ikeda’s space to maneuver in Japanese domestic politics was severely constrained.

  Park had some trouble understanding the domestic political difficulties his Japanese counterpart faced. On the basis of his political experience in South Korea, where power was concentrated in the chairman of the military junta, Park assumed that the establishment of mutual trust, friendship, or simply political give-and-take at the level of the top authori-

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  ties between the two countries would ensure a speedy resolution of the territorial, fishery, history, and reparation issues. His lack of experience in diplomatic affairs and his oversimplified image of the Japanese decision-making process were the causes of his eventual disappointment over the results of his trip, especially since he initially thought the trip was a diplomatic triumph.25

  Nonetheless, Park’s Tokyo visit of 1961 was important in three respects.

  First, it assured the Japanese that Park was not going to politicize the territorial, fishery, history, and ideological issues inherited from the colonial past, certainly not to the extent Syngman Rhee had done in the 1950s. The Japanese understood that Park had opened a window of opportunity for cooperation, with or without a genuine reconciliation at the level of the two peoples. Second, the Tokyo visit indicated that Park would step back from Syngman Rhee’s unilaterally declared “Peace Line” to bring about a settlement on the issues of territorial waters and fishery rights if Japan was prepared to deal favorably with the issues of property claims and reparations.26 Third, it also signaled to the United States that South Korea was moving toward the U.S. policy of strengthening the trilateral relationship between South Korea, Japan, and the United States for common regional security interests. These three were major accomplishments for a bilateral relationship marked by mistrust and animosity. But they were not enough to bring about a breakthrough in the negotiations.

  The main obstacle was the issue of property claims. Contrary to Park’s hope for Japanese flexibility, the Ikeda cabinet reiterated the Japanese position that the issue had to be settled in a way that the Japanese public could understand and endorse. Specifically, the Japanese negotiators insisted that the issue of property claims was not an issue of overall damages inflicted on South Korea during the colonial period. If there was to be compensation for colonial damages, Iseki YujirÃ, the Asian Affairs Bureau director in the Japanese Foreign Ministry, argued, it had to be limited strictly to the unpaid salaries, pensions, bonds, and debentures of South Korean workers and investors, among others. Moreover, the claim-ants had to back their demand with solid legal proof. There were reports in the Japanese press that the Foreign Ministry and the Finance Ministry were considering a settlement amount in the range of $20-$80 million.

  By contrast, Park was aiming for a figure between $600 million and $900

  million.27

  With renewed confrontations over the territorial issue of Tokdo, the Peace Line, and the property claims, and facing the Japanese delegation’s criticism of the South Korean refusal to permit the establishment of a Japanese representative office in Seoul, Park had to cancel his plans for an over-

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  night stay in Japan on his way home from the United States. The situation was not helped by the upcoming Upper House elections in Japan, which prevented the pro–South Korea members of the Diet from turning the tide on the politically sensitive issue of property claims. As an effort at damage control, Ikeda reached out to both Japanese and American advocates of a quick settlement in January 1962 with an official statement that political stability in South Korea served Japanese security interests and that his government was prepared to pursue negotiations for diplomatic normalization in earnest.28 To break the deadlock, South Korean foreign minister Ch’oe Tôk-sin met with his Japanese counterpart, Kosaka ZentarÃ, on March 15, 1962. Six days later, KCIA director Kim Chong-p’il made his second visit to Japan to reinforce the foreign ministers’ meeting. Neither effort proved to be successful, despite Kim Chong-p’il’s show of enthusiasm and determination. If anything, his visit to Japan only increased South Korean opposition to the normalization of relations. The timing of his visit did not help either, as it coincided with President Yun Po-sôn’s resignation in March 1962 in protest against Park’s authoritarian rule, which strengthened the anti-treaty forces in Japan. The outbreak of student demonstrations in South Korea forced Kim Chong-p’il to cut his visit short. Subsequently, the normalization talks were suspended for five months.29

  It was in this context of drift, if not deadlock, in the South Korean–Japanese talks that the U.S. government intervened to convince the Japanese leaders of the importance of reaching a quick settlement with South Korea.

  Kennedy urged former prime minister Yoshida Shigeru in May 1962 to help facilitate the talks. Other U.S. officials followed suit with a similar message in talks with Japanese political leaders.30 In the end, however, the United States could not force Ikeda to unambiguously commit his political career to the normalization of relations with South Korea. The Japanese prime minister was reluctant to push the normalization talks forward, lest, as he explained to Rusk, they trigger another political crisis like the one generated over the 1960 signing of the United States–Japanese mutual security treaty. Extremely cautious, Ikeda even tried to mollify the Left with the idea of pursuing a separate overture toward North Korea in August 1962. Ikeda suggested that Japan could “someday” negotiate a separate deal with Pyôngyang on the issues of property claims, implying that Seoul could not claim jurisdiction over the entire Korean Peninsula.31 The idea of a separate deal with the North added another reason, in addition to anti-Japanese nationalist sentiments, for the South Korean public to oppose Park’s diplomatic initiative.

  Fortunately for Park, Ikeda Hayato’s resounding reelection as the LDP

  president on July 14, 1962, appeared to encourage him to take a more

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  forward-looking policy regarding South Korea.32 With the launching of a new cabinet, Ohira Masayoshi, the newly appointed foreign minister and Ikeda Hayato’s close lieutenant, began tackling the normalization talks.

  Ohira was given the task of settling the outstanding issue
s as quickly as possible. In the most detailed effort yet, Ohira proposed a four-point guideline for settling the claims issue. First, he proposed that Japan would make only private settlements, the total of which would not exceed $70

  million. Second, a grant in the amount of $100 million would be provided in the form of economic assistance. Third, he set forth the idea of supplying South Korea with long-term low-interest loans to aid the launching of its first FYEDP. Fourth, the settlement would be made with the understanding that it dealt only with the claims issues made by the people living to the south of the armistice line.33 The willingness to make only private settlements meant that Japan was unwilling to apologize for its colonial past. Ohira and others believed that an apology could damage Japan’s national identity and global reputation. The restriction of the claims settlement to residents in the South, by contrast, was conceived to ameliorate the leftist opponents in Japan. However, given that this was the first time the specifics of property claims were proposed, Park welcomed Ohira’s initiative, especially with regard to the structural formula of categorizing the claims into private claims, grants, and loans.

  When the talks resumed on August 21, 1962, Sugi Michisuke and Pae

  £i-hwan immediately set up a series of working-level meetings to work out the details. But with no progress on the actual amount of property claims, Kim Chong-p’il had to make his third trip to Japan. On his way to Washington at the State Department’s invitation, Kim Chong-p’il made a three-day layover in Tokyo in October 1962 to negotiate the amount with Ohira. Under instructions from Park, Kim set his target at between $600

  million and $900 million.34 From here on, Park kept a close watch on the negotiation process, making specific orders to Kim Chong-p’il on some of the details of settlement issues, including the total amount of property claims to be received from Japan.35

  The stopover meeting was exploratory at best. It was not until Kim Chong-p’il and Ohira held their second meeting upon Kim’s return from the United States that the negotiations began in earnest. The Japanese foreign minister expected Kim to ask for $800 million on the basis of his earlier talks with South Korean deputy prime minister Kim Yu-t’aek in September 1961. In a sharp contrast to the Japanese offer of $50 million, the South Koreans thought Kim Yu-t’aek’s figure was a concession by the South Korean side, being much lower than Rhee Syngman’s demand for $2