なぜ韓国人は、嫌われるのか？

Japan's Neighbors Cool to Koizumi
Visit to Shrine, Silence on Textbook Offend Many in South Korea, China

By Doug Struck
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, August 25, 2001; Page A13


TOKYO, Aug. 24 -- The leaders of China and South Korea have balked at meeting with Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, and their quarrel over history has put relations between the Asian neighbors at the lowest ebb in years, according to foreign and Japanese diplomats.

Koizumi's visit this month to a shrine that honors militarism, and his refusal to intervene to prevent the approval of a revisionist history textbook, have set back Japan's long efforts to mend relations with its most important neighbors, those diplomats and other analysts say.

"My sense is that this is really a very, very bad situation," said a top Foreign Ministry official. "Usually your diplomats will scramble to try to find some way to get things back on track. This time they're at a loss."

The rift has exposed the foreign policy weakness in the Koizumi government, even while his domestic popularity is soaring, analysts noted. While the Japanese public has applauded Koizumi's pledges of economic and political reform, little attention has been paid here to the perception in other Asian countries that Koizumi symbolizes strident Japanese nationalism.

Following his controversial Aug. 13 visit to the Yasukuni Shrine, the symbolic heart of Japanese wartime militarism, Koizumi said he wanted to meet with the top leaders of China and South Korea to try to mend ties. But both have refused the request and are holding the prime minister at arm's length, according to diplomatic sources.

Attempts to arrange a meeting with South Korean President Kim Dae Jung during a U.N. Special Session on Children in New York next month were stymied when Seoul laid down conditions for the meeting last week.

South Korean Foreign Minister Han Seung Soo told parliament that Japan must reiterate its 1998 apology for wartime atrocities. Other officials told Korean reporters that Koizumi must acknowledge the correctness of the decision by almost all local school boards in Japan to reject the use of the controversial textbook approved by the national government.

"Those conditions were pretty tough to meet," said the Foreign Ministry source here.

Instead of going to New York, Koizumi is considering a trip through Southeast Asia to try to improve diplomatic ties there, his office has confirmed.

Similarly, China's President Jiang Zemin has balked at meeting with Koizumi when the world's leaders, including President Bush, gather in Shanghai in October for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum meeting. So-called sideline meetings are routine at such international forums. China also has laid out a diplomatic price for the meeting, though in vaguer terms.