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A man passes in front of a huge wall painting for South Korea’s Catholic martyrs at Solmoe Shrine in Dangjin, 85km southwest of Seoul. Photo: AFP

As Japan-South Korea dispute rages on, can Christians make a difference?

  • As ties between the neighbours worsen, Christians from both countries are pressing ahead on people-to-people relations with their counterparts
  • Some say they are trying to foster the personal connections lacked by the likes of Moon Jae-in and Shinzo Abe in a bid to bridge recent and historical enmity
Japan
For Jung Jae-won, the head of Missions TV at the Christian Broadcasting System (CBS) television station in Seoul, being called chinilpa – a derogatory term for Koreans friendly towards Japan – is something she brushes off, especially in recent months as ties between the neighbours worsen.
As part of a project she leads at CBS Japan, a branch of the broadcaster, Jung is still organising trips for South Koreans to visit historical Christian sites in the southwestern port city of Nagasaki – despite calls for Koreans to boycott Japanese products and tours as Tokyo and Seoul remain at loggerheads over historical and territorial disputes.

“We stand by our purpose,” Jung said. “And there are people who agree with us and are willing to go along on the trip when a lot of people are cancelling their trips to Japan.”

The bilateral tiff, which flared up in July on the back of a South Korean court ordering Japanese companies to make reparations to wartime Korean forced labourers, has seen Japan remove South Korea from a list of its preferred trading partners, and Seoul’s termination of an intelligence-sharing pact with Tokyo.

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CBS Japan is among the handful of Christian groups and individuals in South Korea pressing ahead on people-to-people relations with their Japanese counterparts, in the hope of closer contact between citizen organisations and people across borders with different upbringings.

The Unesco-listed “Hidden Christian Sites” in Nagasaki show how Christian communities lived in hiding from the 17th to the late 19th century, when the religion was prohibited in Japan. In 1597, military ruler Toyotomi Hideyoshi executed 26 Christians in the city as the faith’s followers grew to the point it was perceived as a threat to the established religions of Shinto and Buddhism.

Christianity was first scrutinised and later fully banned, which led to rebellions and the execution of thousands of Christians. Following the Meiji Restoration in 1868, when political power was transferred from the feudal military government to nobles and former samurai, freedom of religion was pronounced. Today, there are about 1 million to 2 million Christians in Japan, about 1 per cent of the population.

Jung, who is one of South Korea’s 14 million Christians, said about 100,000 people had gone on trips her company organised to the Christian sites over the past 15 years. The trips usually last five days and cost between 580,000 and 670,000 Korean won (US$486-$561).

“In the Bible, it says to love your neighbours, and I realised that Japan was one of our closest neighbours,” Jung said. “I think spreading evangelism and peace to Japan is the greatest display of love compared to anything else.”

The skyline of Nagasaki, Japan. Photo: Alamy

Fraying ties

Amid South Korea’s boycott of Japan, flag carrier Korean Air has stopped flying some routes there due to low demand – but a cruise ship hired by CBS Japan is still expected to set sail to Nagasaki from the Korean port of Busan with around 460 passengers in November.
In July, the number of South Korean visitors to Japan dropped 7.6 per cent compared with the corresponding month in 2018. According to an August survey by pollster Realmeter, 80 per cent of 500 Korean respondents said they would not travel to Japan this year. Sales of Uniqlo, the most popular Japanese clothing brand in South Korea, dropped 70 per cent from end-June to end-July, according to credit card sales figures.

What’s driving Japan’s escalating feud with South Korea?

According to a recent report by The Japan Times, the dispute has derailed a surge in hiring of highly educated South Korean graduates in Japanese companies in recent years. The South Korean Labour Ministry cancelled a Japan-focused job fair this month, and an expo held by the Korea-Japan Cooperation Foundation for Industry and Technology in mid-July received 20 per cent fewer participants than its previous fairs.

But this has not deterred Yoshida Kojo, the 76-year-old pastor of the Japanese Church in Seoul.

In the middle of Jongro, one of the busiest areas of Seoul, stands Tapgol Park – the place where the March 1st Movement against Japanese occupation started in 1919. A symbol of Korean independence from Japanese imperialism, the small park with a single-story pagoda is also where Kojo takes students from Japanese high schools to start Korean history seminars every summer and winter break.
South Korean President Moon Jae-in walks by Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. Photo: AP

Kojo said about 30 students from Japan’s private Christian schools register for study tours with him every summer. He has been doing this for 20 years, and while the current bilateral dispute has caused some parents to be wary of sending their children to Seoul, the pastor says only one student has failed to make the trip this summer due to parental concerns.

Having arrived in Seoul from Japan almost 40 years ago as a missionary, the self-professed “harmony pastor” has made unity between Korean and Japanese nationals a goal of his ministry.

“Our weekly congregation is made up of 30 Japanese and Korean members who remain like a family regardless of the recent affairs between the two countries,” Kojo said.

Our weekly congregation is made up of 30 Japanese and Korean members who remain like a family
Pastor Yoshida Kojo

Another of his major objectives has been to encourage the Japanese government to apologise for the “atrocities” it committed during its time in control of Korea, from 1910 to 1945. While Japan says the forced labour issue has been settled as part of a US$500 million payout under a treaty signed in 1965 and a new agreement reached in 2015, Kojo said the payment was for economic cooperation, not for compensation.

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Needless to say, his is not a common view among Japanese. “There have been many Japanese people who have been critical towards my ministry, and there have even been threats to me in the past,” Kojo said. All the same, he is determined to continue on his mission to dispel any misunderstandings between the people of both countries that might arise from different interpretations of their history.

“Since schools in Japan don’t really teach students the history of Japanese imperialism in Korea, many Japanese people underestimate the level of deep-rooted hostility that so many Koreans hold against Japan,” Kojo explained. “This, in turn, causes both sides to be on different pages when dealing with bilateral issues.”

Different diplomacy

Despite talks between officials from both sides, Tokyo-Seoul ties show no signs of improving. Lee Shin-hwa, a professor of international relations at Korea University, expresses little confidence in non-governmental diplomacy making a political breakthrough. “In the end, the issue with Japan is too big for soft power diplomacy or religious groups to solve,” she said.

Oura Church, Nagasaki. Photo: Adam Nebbs
What could make a difference is personal connections between political leaders, Lee said, pointing out that South Korean President Moon Jae-in, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and their officials lack these at the moment.

Lee also highlighted the relationship between the countries’ former leaders Nam Duk-woo and Yasuhiro Nakasone, who were members of the Korea-Japan Cooperation Committee in the 1980s.

“When Nam died in 2013, the eldest son of Nakasone came to the funeral instead of his 100-year-old father who couldn’t make the trip to South Korea,” Lee said.

“In my opinion, Korea had leverage power when its political leaders had personal relations with counterparts in Japan and could go to the negotiation table when there were disagreements between the two sides. But these relations ceased to exist when the Korean nationals who spoke Japanese and maintained close ties with Japan aged.”

When politics cannot offer the answer to peace, there must be an alternative source for understanding each other at the person-to-person level
Lee Shin-hwa, Korea University

Jung from Missions TV begs to differ, however. “I believe that religion and person-to-person diplomacy can be a way for both sides to move towards accepting each other when no other strategy has shown to work … South Korea is requesting that Japan apologises for something the country will likely never fully apologise for.”

She says this is an endless cycle. “When politics cannot offer the answer to peace, there must be an alternative source for understanding each other at the person-to-person level.”

According to an employee of the National Council of Churches in Korea – a body that encompasses nine different Christian denominations and many other organisations in the country – the relationship between churches and Christian organisations in South Korea and Japan is “more deep-rooted than one might think”.

“We’ve had over 40 years of conferences between these churches and our connection with the National Christian Council in Japan, our counterpart in Japan, is even closer these days,” said the employee, who works in international cooperation for the council.

When bilateral disputes erupted in July, both councils held emergency press conferences and stressed even more their cooperative meetings and efforts. “We are active with the understanding that we are all brothers and sisters with a shared purpose of peace,” the employee said.

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