The fruitless Abe-Park summit

South Korean President Park Geun-hye’s distrust of Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s sincerity in acknowledging Japan’s military brutality before and during World War II remains high, despite the efforts of US President Barack Obama to bring them together for their first face-to-face talks on Tuesday in the Netherlands.

The summit delivered little progress, although other high officials will meet separately.

For Obama, more conducive relations between the two US allies are vital in facing North Korea, whose leader Kim Jong-un has repeatedly proved to be no less dangerous than his father, the late Kim Jong-il.

When Obama met with Park and Abe in The Hague, Kim Jong-un launched a ballistic missile in defiance of his three enemies.

Abe had become isolated among his neighbors because Chinese President Xi Jinping had turned down Abe’s offer for bilateral talks. Japan faces a much more complex challenge with China; apart from bitter disputes over the behavior of Japan regarding its past colonial history, the two countries also face overlapping sovereignty claims.

From the beginning Japan refused to follow the path of Germany, which succeeded in overcoming its own “ghosts” of World War II. Many Japanese still believe what its military did in China, Korea and other parts of Asia, like Indonesia, was for the good of the people in those countries.

Some ultranationalist politicians even believe that rather than condemning Japan, its neighbors should feel grateful because Japan’s occupation greatly “contributed” to the development of those countries.

Abe is intensifying approaches to Pyongyang to resolve a politically sensitive issue in Japan — the abductions of Japanese citizens by North Korea in the 1970s. True, Japan must protect its citizens. But what about other people’s sufferings from Japanese rule?

The North Korean leader continues to issue nuclear threats regardless of the impact on his impoverished nation. Kim Jong-un never hesitates to defy the appeal of China, his largest and apparently only supporter.

Obama needs a united Japan-South Korea front to stop Pyongyang’s reckless actions. North Korea’s Kim Jong-un knows very well how to benefit from the dispute between Tokyo and Seoul. But as long as Abe and the Liberal Democratic Party continue to deny the historic facts, Japan will continue to face its neighbors’ distrust.

Meanwhile, Kim Jong-un will be even freer to do what he wants, knowing his adversaries will never be united.

The Jakarta Post | Editorial