Akiko Ikui, Japan’s parliamentary vice minister at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, delivers a eulogy at a memorial service for the Sado Mine at the Aikawa Development Center in Sado, Niigata Prefecture, Japan, on November 24. A tourist visits the Sado Mine, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, in Sado City, Niigata Prefecture, Japan, on the same day. Yonhap-AP

Japan’s memorial ceremony for the Sado Mine on November24 became a “private event” with no mention of the forced labor of South Koreans and no attendance by the South Korean government or survivors of forced labor, raising criticism of the government’s diplomatic failures.

The current government’s approach to diplomacy with Japan, which is to preemptively make concessions on past history issues and then wait for Japan to respond, has been criticized as the fundamental problem. The fact that the memorial ceremony agreed upon by South Korea and Japan has goneawry from the first year may also be a negative factor in future bilateral relations.

The memorial service was one of the measures promised by the Japanese government in exchange for South Korea’s decision not to oppose the Sado mine’s nomination as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in late July this year. The government has attached significance to the presence of Japanese government officials at the memorial service, unlike previous memorial services organized by Japanese private organizations. The memorial service will be held annually inJuly or August.

Even after the Sado mine was inscribed as a World Heritage Site, consultations were not smooth sailing. The consultation was delayed due to Japan’s domestic political calendar. The date of the memorial service was only finalized on November20, four days before the event. The South Korean government, not Japan, was to pay for the bereaved families to visit Japan. The memorial service was also named the “Sado Mine Memorial Service,” which was ambiguous as to who was being honored. This has raised questions about Japan’s “sincerity” in handling the memorial service.

Akiko Ikuina, parliamentary vice minister at Japan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, who represented the Japanese government at the memorial service, was later revealed to have paid tribute to the Yasukuni Shrine on August 15, 2022. The South Korean government’s position that its request for more than a minister to attend the ceremony was accepted was overshadowed. The Japanese side reportedly did not even inform South Korea of the content of Ikuiina’s eulogy until the day before.

It has been pointed out that the government did not actively engage in negotiations when Japan’s World Heritage nomination was being discussed. This means that the government should have agreed on the status of the Japanese government participants in the memorial ceremony and the core content of the eulogy in advance, when it could have influenced the decision. The World Heritage Committee (WHC) decides on nominations by consensus of all 21 member states, so South Korea’s opposition would have put a lot of pressure on the Japanese government.

Foreign Minister Cho Tae-yul responded to the criticism at a plenary session of the National Assembly’s Foreign Affairs and Unification Committee on September 11, saying, “I’m sorry for not thinking that far ahead.”

The government’s poor diplomacy during the subsequent consultation process has also been criticized. The government was neither persistent in its demands nor well-informed until the event was nearing. The government’s decision to announce the date of the memorial service without agreeing on the content of the eulogy with the Japanese participants is also considered problematic.

In her eulogy, Ikuiina read a passage that hinted at a perception that the forced mobilization of Korean workers was “legal.” This was also predictable. The exhibits that the government had installed as a condition of agreeing with Japan to inscribe the site as a World Heritage Site, which were supposed to educate the public about the history of Korean laborers, were also controversial because they contained nothing that revealed the context of coercion.

It has been argued that the memorial service was fundamentally a result of the Korean government’s diplomatic stance toward Japan. The government preemptively made concessions to Japan, such as proposing a “third-party reimbursement” solution to the Supreme Court’s forced labor compensation ruling in March of last year, hoping for a sincere response from Japan. Japan would fill the “remaining water glass. However, there was no meaningful response from Japan.

The issue of distorting history in textbooks and provoking Dokdo has also been repeated. “The government’s response is inflexible because it is based on the premise that improving Korea-Japan relations is the most important thing and must be maintained,” said Yang Ki-ho, a professor at SungkonghoeUniversity.

It is unlikely that the memorial service will be held again this year with the South Korean government in attendance. It is also possible that the issue could become a source of conflict between South Korea and Japan. “Both countries should make efforts to ensure that one-time issue does not disrupt the overall flow of bilateral relations,” Cho said in an appearance on MBN the previous day.