Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's war anniversary statement and South Korean President Park Geun-hye's prudent reaction to it offer hopes that the long-frayed relations between the two neighbors could improve, U.S. experts said Tuesday.
"The good news here is that the Korean president seems to agree that Prime Minister Abe is in a much better place on matters of mutual concern than he has been. And she also seems to agree that the Abe statement contains enough to warrant further open doors, not slam and shut," Evans Revere, senior Director at Albright Stonebridge Group, said at a Heritage Foundation discussion.
Revere was referring to Park's Liberation Day address in which she positively assessed Abe's statement despite criticism that the nationalist Japanese leader failed again to offer a clear apology for the country's sexual enslavement of Korean women for its troops during World War II.
In the address, Park said Abe's statement falls short of expectations, but said it's still worth noting that Abe promised that positions of previous cabinets will remain unshakable. The remarks were seen as an expression of her willingness to improve relations with Japan.
"Prime Minister Abe's statement appears to have given Koreans just enough to work with as the two sides explore ways to try to improve ties and settle various pending issues between them.
Without question, the Abe statement could have been better and certainly more could have been said to assuage Korean sensitivities," Revere said.
The expert said that Abe should have made "a stand-alone reference" to the suffering of the Korean people, instead of merely including them in a list of the many in the region. The Japanese leader should have also made a specific reference to the sexual slavery issue, he said.
Revere said he believes it was also a mistake by Abe to talk about the apology burden of future generations.
"For Japan to be relieved of the need for future apologies, it's important that today's expressions of remorse and regret are seen as genuine, credible and sincere. To do so, Tokyo is going to have to make further efforts to reconcile with its Korean neighbor," he said.
Revere said it is too early to tell whether Seoul and Tokyo will be able to make progress on thorny issues.
"But what seems clear at this point is that in the aftermath of the Abe statement and thanks to what I believe is President Park's very wise and very prudent and very statesman-like reaction to it, the two sides seem prepared to try," he said.
Sheila Smith, senior fellow for Japan studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, also praised Park's address as "measured and thoughtful," saying it left room to work with Abe if the two governments decide that is what they want to do, just as the Abe statement left room to work.
The two leaders at least "did not present an additional hurdle," she said.
Smith also expressed hope for the realization of a trilateral summit between Park, Abe and Chinese President Xi Jinping on the sidelines of China's war anniversary event set for next month.
"I hope that this fall will be an occasion for the three leaders to meet and I hope that Seoul and Tokyo will find a way to make that meeting a positive opportunity for the relationship," she said. (Yonhap)
