What, No Apology Juice?

Like American Congressmen who only seem capable of demanding apologies over events long past from countries considered allies, the Korean government displays a rather selective attitude on matters of apologetics and compensation.

Roh said inter-Korean relations should now change, and a South Korean request for an apology from the North would hinder the two countries’ efforts to establish peace on the Korean Peninsula.

“There is a disparity between (the South) asking (the North) for an apology and inter-Korean reconciliation and cooperation. I want to ask advocates of a North Korean apology if they are opposed to inter-Korean peace,” Roh was quoted by his spokesperson as saying in a meeting with foreign correspondents based in Seoul.

As noted on The Marmot's Hole, this willingness to overlook the past in one case while insisting on ever more apologies over issues even further in the past - and these much less vicious than killing 2 million of your people in a war - spells out a certain message: to get the Korean government to leave you alone, the best way to do is to behave like a tyrannical thugocracy; it is noteworthy how rarely Koreans have angry words to share with the Russians, the Chinese or the North Koreans who are responsible for far more (and far more recent) suffering on the Korean peninsula than Japan has been.

As I've noted in the past, the selectivity of Korean outrage is symptomatic of the bully who picks a target precisely because he knows not to expect any retaliation - it is modern Japan's very pacifism and diffidence in the face of foreign pressure which Koreans are banking on when they start whining about allegedly "nonexistent" or "insincere" apologies and demanding [反省しる！」 The lesson to be learned from this tendency as well as America's current issue with Turkey seems to be one I find regrettable: that in international politics, all else being equal, the thug with the hair-trigger temper can expect much better treatment than the soft-spoken gentleman who attempts to see the other side's point of view however unreasonable said view may be.

Comments

[Kenji]

A nice post. Saw a small typo---I think you meant「反省しろ！」, not「反省しる！」.

[Abiola Lapite]

Nope, I really did mean　「反省汁」 - it's a reference to a statement made by a Korean politician by the name 金泳鎭. See the following pages.

http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E9%87%91%E6%B3%B3%E9%8E%AD
http://www.geocities.co.jp/WallStreet/3575/yj.html

Hence the "apology juice" in the post title.