Japan and South Korea reach important accord

Japan and South Korea, increasingly powerful nations, have reached an important agreement with far-reaching positive implications.

On March 16, Prime Ministers

Fumio Kishida of Japan and Yoon Suk-yeol of South Korea shared food and fellowship in a Tokyo restaurant, where they reached a remarkable understanding.

They agreed bilateral visits, suspended in 2018, will resume, reconfirmed sharing of intelligence information, and put an end to a rather charged, tense four-year trade dispute.

They also agreed on sustained collaboration regarding security.

Additionally, in early March, South Korea’s foreign minister, Park Jin, announced that a foundation funded by Korean companies would compensate victims of forced labor during Japan’s occupation of Korea.

U.S. President Joe Biden immediately praised this generous South Korea initiative.

The two nations share a complex, difficult history. Japan’s long-term occupation of Korea in the 20th century, which continued until 1945, included forced prostitution of Korean women and more general exploitation of the population. Totalitarianism has now faded, but legacies and painful memories continue.

South Korea’s Supreme Court ruled in 2018 that a comprehensive settlement of wartime compensation claims, reached in 1965, does not prevent individuals from seeking reparations. This opened the door for individuals to sue Japanese companies for compensation.

In reaction, Japan announced that special trade relations with South Korea would end.

Japanese companies would have to make formal applications, which can be quite cumbersome, for any technology-related deals with South Korea. South Korea retaliated.

This dispute has ended.

The two economies are world leaders in scale, production and overall effectiveness, but are notable for remaining surprisingly separate from another. This directly reflects their extremely difficult history.

South Korea’s earlier chief executive, President Moon Jaein, helped encourage the current progress. In August 2019, he took the occasion of the 10th anniversary of the death of South Korea’s great leader Kim Dae-jung to underscore the importance of a 1998 Joint Declaration between Japan and South Korea, and the fundamental need for partnership. President Kim’s effectiveness in fighting South Korea’s earlier harsh dictatorship marked him as a special target, and he survived at least five attempts on his life. One of the most dramatic incidents occurred in 1973, when South Korea government agents kidnapped him from a Tokyo hotel and took him to a ship, where they intended to kill him at sea.

Donald Gregg, the highly experienced CIA station chief in South Korea, acted decisively.

After a U.S. helicopter flew low over the ship and Mr. Gregg intervened personally and forcefully, the kidnappers reluctantly released President Kim.

Mr. Gregg, whose intelligence career dates back to training commandos during the Korean War, later served as U.S. ambassador to Seoul during the George H.W. Bush administration and more recently provided outstanding professional leadership to the Korea Society based in New York City.

Ambassador Gregg was also national security adviser to Vice President George Bush. Most of Mr. Gregg’s career was spent with the CIA. He personified the commitment and dedication of career professionals crucial to our success in the Cold War.

Mr. Kim’s courage and commitment to representative government were rewarded when this great leader was elected president of the Republic of Korea in 1997. Without hesitation, he moved to begin détente with the North Korea regime. This culminated in a dramatic summit meeting in 2000 with the leader of North Korea, beginning the fitful interchange with Pyongyang.

Kim Dae-jung received the 2000 Nobel Peace Prize for his leadership, which resonates well beyond Korea.

Preoccupation with China should not distract from remarkable, positive developments in Asia.

Arthur I. Cyr is author of “After the Cold War - American Foreign Policy, Europe and Asia” (NYU Press and Palgrave/Macmillan). He is also the director of the Clausen Center at Carthage College in Kenosha, Wisc., and a Clausen Distinguished Professor. He welcomes questions and comments at acyr@carthage.edu.

I guess it’s a nice gesture. But they aren’t giving the land back! Companies go through the motions.

“They feel like they have to,” says York College professor Erec Smith. “They have to signal to the world that they’re doing something.”

They hope it will protect them from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and lawsuits.

Dr. Smith was once a diversity officer. He left the position because he thought it was “useless.”

Or worse.

“It makes people less likely to interact with people unlike them,” he says. “It’s a minefield now.”

At diversity trainings, employees learn about “microaggressions,” speech that’s subtly biased.

“If you ask somebody what they do for a living, somehow that’s racist,” says Dr. Smith. “If you learn that, then why would you take a chance? ... ‘I’m going to silence myself’ ... not talk to black people.”

A Coca-Cola diversity training tells employees, “Be less white.” “Being white” includes being “oppressive, arrogant, defensive, ignorant.”

“That is by no means a white thing,” says Dr. Smith. “The point is to demonize the other side.”

Worst of all, despite the $3 billion spent on DEI training by American companies today, DEI trainings don’t do what they’re supposed to do.

A Harvard professor analyzed studies of them and says, “Sadly

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