billion and Chang Myôn’s figure of $1.2 billion.36 Ohira was more gener-
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ous—but not much from the South Korean perspective. Ohira had originally proposed $170 million in private settlements and grants, plus an undefined amount of long-term low-interest loans. Incidentally, the Japanese foreign affairs and finance ministries had suggested that the entire package should remain below $100 million.37
Ohira once recollected the following from his talk with Kim Chong-p’il: I can well understand the feelings of your people toward Japan. However, I
[do not] think there is any benefit for your country in saying only resentful things about Japan . . . Our two countries are perpetual neighbours, so
[should we not] make up our minds to discard, like ash in an ashtray, everything that is past and have some vision for the future? If there is such a sentiment on your side, Japan, too, will be sensible enough to behave accordingly.
Now that you have become independent and are faced with the difficult task of building up your nation, Japan, as your country’s perpetual neighbour, will be willing to assist your future progress with substantial economic cooperation.38
After intense haggling, the two sides finally agreed on the figures of $300 million in grants, $200 million in ODA (Official Development Assistance) loans, and over $100 million dollars in commercial loans.39 Included in the $300 million in grants was the write-off of a $45.7 million debt that South Korea owed to Japan. To make the deal more acceptable to Japanese legislators and bureaucrats, and also taking into account Japan’s lack of foreign exchange reserves, Ohira proposed making the payments over an extended period of time. Kim Chong-p’il agreed to receive both the grants and the ODA loans over ten years. By contrast, the commercial loans were to be provided even before the conclusion of diplomatic normalization on a case-by-case basis.40 Finally, aware of each other’s domestic political vulnerabilities, the two agreed to different interpretations of the deal. Whereas Kim Chong-p’il saw the deal to be a settlement of property claims and reparations for Japan’s colonial wrongdoings, Ohira Masayoshi claimed that it was Japan’s economic assistance to South Korea. With their terms of agreement written down on a piece of paper at the end of the meeting, the controversial “Kim-Ohira Memorandum” was brought into existence.41
The Kim-Ohira Memorandum settled what was considered to be the key issue for a comprehensive settlement. Park had already indicated that he was ready to resolve the issues of fishery rights and the Peace Line dispute if the Japanese showed good faith on the property claims issue. But aware of the danger of nationalist backlash in South Korea against the Kim-Ohira Memorandum, the two negotiators agreed to keep the agreement secret.42 It was not until January 29, 1963, that the actual contents of
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the memorandum were revealed by the Japanese Foreign Ministry. As foreseen by Park and Kim Chong-p’il, the revelation of the terms of the agreement greatly angered the South Korean opposition, which was already resentful of Kim Chong-p’il’s resort to “one-man diplomacy” (ilin oegyo). 43
Moreover, the secretive nature of the negotiations worsened public fears of a sell-out. Nationwide demonstrations quickly followed, forcing Park—
hitherto believed, especially by the pro-treaty group in Japan, to have been impervious to public opinion—to stall the talks for a good part of the 1963–1964 period.
Treaty Crisis
As in the jump-start of negotiations in October-November 1961, it was once again the United States that brought South Korea and Japan to the negotiating table in the mid-1960s. The United States was never directly involved in the negotiations. Rather, it actively mediated behind the scenes, steadily applying pressure on Seoul and Tokyo to work out a treaty on mutually agreeable terms. Even in the spring of 1963, when the United States was at odds with Park over his attempt to renege on his earlier promise to turn over the government to civilians (see Chapter 2), the United States continued its effort to bring together its two East Asian allies.44 Through the good offices of Rusk, ambassador to South Korea Samuel D. Berger, ambassador to Japan Edwin O. Reischauer, under secretary of state for political affairs W. Averell Harriman, and assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs William P. Bundy, the United States played the intermediary role throughout the critical 1964–1965 period.
The United States’ role of mediation heightened in 1964 because of the intensification of military conflict in Indochina. The events in South Vietnam unfolded rapidly. The overthrow and death of President Ngo Dinh Diem in 1963 led the National Front for the Liberation of South Vietnam (NLF) to hope that South Vietnam would become a neutral state under a coalition government. But President Lyndon B. Johnson moved in the opposite direction, adamantly pressing for an early military victory. For Johnson, neutrality was tantamount to a communist takeover of South Vietnam.45 Johnson’s resounding victory in the U.S. presidential election in November 1964 led to an escalation of bombing expeditions against North Vietnam under Operation Rolling Thunder. Arguing that he had to provide security for Americans, Johnson also called for the dispatch of ground troops in large numbers. By the end of 1965, United States military
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forces in South Vietnam numbered 184,314. The undeclared war in Indochina was fully under way.
Against this background, the United States eagerly awaited the normalization of relations between South Korea and Japan. In order to effectively carry out its military campaign in South Vietnam, the United States counted on Japan’s logistical support and South Korea’s supply of combat forces. As part of his political campaign to project the image of unity in the free world behind U.S. war efforts in South Vietnam, Johnson also sought solidarity among his anticommunist allies in East Asia and, in particular, a strong regional support network tying together South Korea and Japan.
During his meeting with Park on October 2, 1964, U.S. national security adviser McGeorge Bundy acknowledged that South Korea had valid reasons to demand Japan’s apology for its wrongdoings committed during the colonial era. He also encouraged Japanese foreign minister Shiina Etsusaburà to visit Seoul.46 When Park showed his willingness to back the United States in the Vietnam War, Bundy pledged to offer his personal commitment to persuade Japan to make concessions to South Korea.47 The United States’ deepening entrapment in South Vietnam was rapidly changing South Korea’s political and economic fortunes.
This tilt toward South Korea was a reversal—however brief and limited—in the United States’ foreign policy in East Asia, which had traditionally been defined from the vantage point of Japan. Even as late as in the fall of 1964, cold war expert George F. Kennan reiterated what had always been the United States’ position on the relationship between South Korea and Japan:
Those in [South] Korea who oppose the establishment of acceptable relations with the overwhelmingly peace-loving Japan of the present day show scant appreciation for the advantages of American protection and little inclination to be helpful to the United States in the exercise of the responsibilities it has assumed in that area . . . If the regime in South Korea, whose domestic failures are serious in any case, is forced to remain a dead weight on American policy towards Japan, it will eventually compel a reconsideration of American policy towards [South] Korea generally; for [South] Korea is important, but Japan is more important still.48
To be certain, Japan remained the United States’ most important ally in East Asia despite the much enhanced U.S.–South Korean relationship amid the Vietnam War. Nonetheless, the war had far-reaching consequences on the politico-strategic landscape of the East Asian region, forcing significant changes in the way the United States conducted its East Asia policy. With
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the prospect of South Korean combat troops fighting alongside U.S. troops in South Vietnam, the United States became more understanding of the problems South Korea ha
d encountered with Japan in the normalization talks. Kennan was right to suggest that South Korea was less strategically important to the United States than Japan. But having failed to take fully into account Johnson’s slide into the Vietnamese quagmire, Kennan was unable to assess accurately the political implications of South Korean troop engagement in the Vietnam War. Park, thanks to the war, was able to influence the direction of U.S. policy toward the normalization talks more than Kennan might have imagined. Rather than being a “dead weight,”
South Korea was on its way to becoming a central part of U.S. policy in East Asia.
The final push for the conclusion of the normalization talks would not begin until late 1964, when, by fortuitous coincidence, the two sides appointed new foreign ministers who were both strong pro-treaty advocates: Yi Tong-wôn in South Korea and Shiina Etsusaburà in Japan. Formerly Park’s chief of staff, Yi Tong-wôn was selected with a mission to conclude the normalization talks regardless of the level of domestic political backlash. Right away, the new South Korean foreign minister proposed to alternate the venue between Seoul and Tokyo. Until then, the talks had been held only in Tokyo. Yi also proceeded to conduct “open diplomacy” in order to reduce public distrust. Having fought against the Japanese colonial rule in his youth and also against the U.S. military occupation in the post-independence period, Yi Tong-wôn felt confident that he could appeal to the public.
In Japan, Sato Eisaku became the new prime minister on November 9, 1964, upon Ikeda Hayato’s retirement from public life due to illness. A younger brother of former prime minister Kishi Nobusuke, Sato Eisaku shared Kishi’s support for a quick settlement with South Korea. In his first Diet address as prime minister on November 20, Sato expressed his intention to “resolve the outstanding problems quickly and justly as desired by the majority of people in both Japan and South Korea.”49 In his first press interview, he optimistically remarked that the talks were near completion, requiring only minor adjustments before a treaty could be signed.50
For Park and Yi Tong-wôn, these words of enthusiasm coming from a man known for his cautious approach prompted great hope for a quick settlement. Still, Sato was by nature more of a consensus builder than a charismatic politician willing to take risks.51 When the time came for tough decision-making, it was Foreign Minister Shiina who stepped forward to meet the challenge. Following the prime minister’s address to the Diet, Shiina remarked:
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As soon as the negotiation agenda is agreed, we would like to resume the talks on the outstanding issues, with special reference to the fishery dispute. Moreover, if my visit to South Korea is required to enhance in any way the understanding between the two countries, I am willing to take the earliest possible opportunity to work out such an arrangement.52
Shiina Etsusaburà was neither a pro–South Korea politician nor a noted expert on international relations when he was appointed the foreign minister in 1964. Having led the Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI) and served as the chief cabinet secretary and state minister under Prime Minister Kishi Nobusuke, Shiina was known more for his economic than for his foreign policy expertise.53 As to his views on South Korea, little was known except that he was hardly a South Korea sympathizer.54 The surprise was that much greater when Shiina put his political career on the line by making independent decisions on some of the key settlement issues.
If there ever was a turning point in the normalization talks, it was when Shiina stood on the arrival platform at the Kimpo airport to publicly
“apologize” for the pain Japan inflicted on the Korean people during the colonial era. With the Japanese national flag hinomaru flying high on the Korean Peninsula for the first time since the end of colonial rule in 1945, the foreign minister made his elusively worded, but still significant arrival statement on history issues:
As neighbors, [South] Korea and Japan have long enjoyed cultural, economic, and other meaningful and friendly exchanges throughout [their] history. It is in this respect that I find it most regrettable that we had to go through this most unfortunate [colonial] period in our history. I feel deeply reflective
[ fukaku hansei suru] about this . . . I will do my utmost best to realize our mutual hope to establish a new starting point in our history to guarantee friendship for many years to come.55
The reception accorded to Shiina by the South Korean government was first class, quite a contrast from the one accorded to his predecessor, Kosaka ZentarÃ, in 1960. More important, Shiina quickly earned the South Korean leadership’s confidence with his earnest and humble manner.56 The two sides quickly set up meetings to hammer out three key issues: (1) whether South Korea’s jurisdiction covered the entire peninsula or only its southern part below the armistice line; (2) how the normalization of relations would affect the status of their old treaties, including the 1910
annexation document; and (3) which of the two countries had sovereignty over Tokdo. It was not until the night before Shiina was scheduled to return to Japan that the two sides agreed on a carefully worded set of principles. With regard to the status of the old “unequal treaties” forced on the
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Chosôn Dynasty (that is, Korea) on or before the annexation in August 1910, the two sides avoided the issue of the legality of Japan’s annexation of Chosôn by simply declaring the treaties to be “already null and void”
(Article II). As for the issue of the geographic reach of South Korea’s jurisdiction in the Korean Peninsula and, hence, the legitimacy of North Korea’s claim to being a sovereign state, Yi Tong-wôn and Shiina Etsusaburo agreed that the government in the South to be “the only lawful Government in Korea as specified in the Resolution 195 (III) of the United Nations General Assembly” (Article III).57 On the other hand, they could not find a mutually agreeable formula on the question of Tokdo. Faced with an unbridgeable difference, Yi Tong-wôn and Shiina Etsusaburo decided to put the issue of territorial dispute on hold in order to proceed with the Basic Relations Treaty.
To capitalize on the momentum generated from Shiina Etsusaburo’s Seoul visit, working-level negotiations quickly resumed in Tokyo on the remaining issues in March 1965. In a month, the two sides settled on all issues. On the issue of fishery rights, the two countries established a joint control zone in addition to exclusive territorial waters. Some restrictions were made on the number and size of fishing boats, and also on the volume (165,000 tons) of the total catch in the joint control zones. Violators of these restrictions were to be “handled with domestic measures including appropriate penalties.” As for the rights of ethnic Koreans living in Japan, those who had resided in Japan before its surrender to the Allied forces on August 15, 1945, and their direct descendants were to be granted permanent resident status by the Japanese government. For the yet-to-be-born
“third generation” and beyond of ethnic Korean residents in Japan, South Korea and Japan agreed to “consult” on their legal status anytime within twenty-five years after the 1965 agreement went into effect. The Japanese also agreed to return or “transfer” a number of old Korean books and treasured art objects taken away during the colonial era. The only major dispute that would not be included in the treaty was the territorial issue over Tokdo. The closest the Japanese could get was to include a passage in the treaty that would say that all bilateral disputes would be settled through diplomatic means. These stipulations in their draft form came to be known as the April Third Agreement. With only the final text left to be produced, the fourteen years of intermittent and emotion-laden negotiations were brought to a close.
The news of the settlement quickly galvanized opposition forces in both South Korea and Japan. The political resistance became particularly serious in South Korea, where the dissident intelligentsia organized the Committee for the Struggle against Humiliating Diplomacy with Japan to
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spearhead nationwide protests on April
9, 1965. On April 14, over 5,000
students took to the streets in Seoul, resulting in the death of a Dongguk University student in one of the confrontations with the police.58 The incident led to even more vigorous demonstrations, forcing the government to issue a garrison decree to maintain political order.
What triggered the spread of opposition demonstrations was the public perception that the South Korean negotiators had yielded too much. The demonstrators demanded Japan’s apology for the forced annexation in 1910. They also took issue with the inability of the Park government to call the Japanese money “reparations.” Contrary to South Korea’s constitution, the treaty documents’ failure to state explicitly South Korea’s claim that its territorial jurisdiction extended over the entire Korean Peninsula was another criticism the Park government had to cope with. Finally, the abolition of the Peace Line, to the dismay of South Korean fishermen, was repeatedly criticized by opponents. The opposition vehemently protested that this all added up to a national sell-out.
To effectively resist Park’s initiative on the normalization issues, the two largest opposition parties—the Democratic Justice Party (DJP) and the Democratic Party (DP)—merged on May 30, 1965, to establish the Popular Party (Minjungdang). The seriousness of the situation prompted the United States to intervene by sending deputy assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs Marshall Green on April 29 and, in his capacity as chairman of the Policy Planning Council at the State Department, Walt Rostow on May 2 to give moral support to the hard-pressed Park.
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