[Editorial] Leaders’ words

Good leaders aren’t necessarily good speakers, but it is important for them to deliver the right message at the right time if they want to rally people behind their leadership.

From that aspect, neither President Park Geun-hye nor Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe can hardly be called good communicators. We could ascertain this in the past few days as both leaders addressed their countries to mark the 70th anniversary of the end of World War II.

Especially, we had no high expectation of the speech Abe gave on the eve of the Aug. 15 anniversary of its surrender to the Allies 70 years ago, which ended the war and Japan’s colonial rule of Korea.

Yet, it is sad that Abe shunned the demand of conscientious people -- including many of his fellow compatriots like former Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama who knelt before the memorial for Korean victims of Japan’s harsh colonial rule -- to face its wartime atrocities squarely and offer sincere apologies.

Some could say that Abe did not choose the worst scenario in that he included words like colonial rule, aggression, remorse and apology. But when you hear him say that “Japan has repeatedly expressed feelings of deep remorse and heartfelt apology for its actions during the war,” you can see the adroit nationalist did not want to say it in his own words.

Moreover, using the past tense, Abe effectively said that Japan has done enough to repent and apologize for the atrocities it committed during the war and its colonial rule of Korea and other parts of Asia.

In fact, Abe said in the statement that “Japan must not let our children, grandchildren and even further generations to come, who have nothing to do with that war, be predestined to apologize.”

Some -- like the three cabinet ministers and about 100 members of the Diet who paid a visit to Yasukuni Shrine -- may agree with Abe. But as Hatoyama put it when he visited a former Japanese colonial prison in Seoul last week, only victims, not perpetrators, can say “that’s enough” when it comes to apologies for past wrongdoings.

If Abe’s war anniversary statement disappointed South Koreans, Chinese and many other sensible members of the international community, Park’s Liberation Day speech failed to send a clear message to its former colonial ruler and more importantly to the world and Koreans.

Park said that Abe’s speech “left much to be desired” but then quickly added that she took note of his pledge that the position of the previous cabinets will “remain unshakable into the future.” One cannot see whether she is happy or not with Abe’s speech.

All she did was call on Japan to demonstrate with consistent and sincere actions its pledge to inherit the recognition of history by the previous cabinets and resolve the issue of military sexual slavery.

It is understandable that Park wanted to enliven hopes for restoring relations with Japan on the occasion of the 70th anniversary of the end of World War II and 50th anniversary of normalization of relations between Seoul and Tokyo. But she could have done more than repeat what she has already long been saying.

Park’s message to North Korea was ambivalent, too. She did mention the recent North Korean provocations like putting land mines in the southern part of the demilitarized zone, but used the Liberation Day speech mainly to paint a rosy picture for unification and enumerating the long list of old proposals to the North -- from linking the two nation’s railroads and arranging reunions of families separated in the two Koreas to joint publication of Korean language dictionaries.

The silliest proposal was the one to build an ecological peace park in the DMZ, over which tension is running high in the wake of the Aug. 4 mine blasts that seriously injured two South Korean soldiers. We wonder how the two soldiers -- still in hospital after losing their legs and ankles, will feel about the commander-in-chief’s peace gestures toward those who planted the mines. Park should have at least dropped the proposal for the DMZ park in her speech.