In October 2006, North Korea went ahead with nuclear tests in spite of international opposition.The international community had made every effort to stop North Korea from possessing nuclear weapons, but these efforts ended in failure. This study seeks to look at the measures the international community had been taking to control North Korea’s nuclear program, analyze why the measures could not work effectively, and examine future problems in controlling North Korean nuclear activity.
The first North Korean nuclear crisis took place in the early 1990s, and ended when the United States and North Korea signed a bilateral Agreed Framework following their negotiations in1994. North Korea agreed to abandon its original nuclear development program on the condition that the world community provided light-water reactors, which were considered to be relatively difficult to divert to military use. The Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organization(KEDO) was formed with Japan, the United States and South Korea as the primary members to implement the supply of light-water reactors. These efforts paved the way for the rest of the world to control North Korea’s nuclear activities. In 2002, however, the second nuclear crisis occurred. North Korea made it known that it was proceeding with a program to produce highly enriched uranium. Subsequently, the international community launched six-party talks involving North Korea, South Korea, the United States, Japan, China and Russia, with the intention of preventing North Korea from obtaining nuclear weapons. In October 2006, North Korea conducted nuclear tests in the face of worldwide opposition. The global society failed to stop North Korea’s nuclear activities.
International efforts were not sufficient to deal with the first nuclear crisis, although North Korea’s nuclear activities were controlled to a certain extent via the agreement with the United States. North Korea’s nuclear ambitions are intended to counter US threats. If the US–North Korean agreement had not been reached, North Korea’s nuclear activities would not have been controlled within any framework. The current ongoing six-party talks will not produce dramatic results unless bilateral negotiations between the United States and North Korea make remarkable progress. The six-party talks have the possibility of acting as an essential framework to maintain East Asian security, as well as managing North Korean nuclear issues. However, the immediate problem is controlling North Korea’s nuclear ambitions. Given this situation, the six-party talks will function only when the bilateral framework between the United States and North Korea works. Once this development has taken place, the six-party talks will then be able to function as a broader framework for further negotiation.

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This special feature is based on the common theme of the FY2019 Autumn Conference (November 30, 2019; NANZAN University): “Conscripted Workers In East Asia: Historical Perceptions, Transitional Justice, and International Law.” The theme for the conference was Japan–South Korea relations, considered to have been at their worst in the post-WWII period. The focus was specifically on issues surrounding conscripted workers’ legal battles. Some of these issues were purely legal, but there were other considerations as well, such as political problems and historical perceptions.

As this special feature is focused on the common theme of the conference, it consists of articles by five people who spoke on the common theme. The paper by Kiyoshi Aoki is written from a perspective rooted in international law. Hideki Okuzono’s paper is an analysis of South Korea’s stance on Japan and the “legitimacy” of the South Korean administration. The paper by Shin Kawashima analyzes the problem from the perspective of transitional justice, using examples from China and Taiwan. Mie Oba‘s contribution investigates the relationship between future historical issues and current diplomatic relations, through a comparison of examples across Southeast Asia. Finally, the paper by Tetsuya Yamada analyzes the legal battle of conscripted workers from the perspective of public international law; investigates the management of Korean reunification, which Japan and South Korea have yet to agree upon; and argues for the utilization of international law to deal with changes in the South Korean administration.

This special feature finds that simple and clear conclusions can not be expected. The aim was to create a platform for discussing historical issues, and modern political issues, in connection with Japan–South Korea relations. These discussions are extremely important for organizing and debating issues relevant to future consideration of East Asian international politics.

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American alliance system in Asia is characterized as a unique bundle of bilateral alliances, different from the multilateral collective defense organization in Europe. Why is there no NATO in Asia? To answer the question, scholars in the field of diplomatic history and international relations have debated diverse aspects of the system and its origins. Diplomatic historians tend to focus on the legacy of historical experiences of war and colonization in the form of deep mistrust and suspicion of the regional states against Japan in the postwar Asia-Pacific. While neo-realists emphasize the structural factors such as distribution of power and power gap among regional states, constructivists look to collective identities and norms such as sovereignty and non-intervention.

Agreeing with major findings of historical studies, this article aims to introduce a logical and theoretical framework to put actions and reactions taken by the reginal states, with a focus on Syngman Rhee’s South Korea, vis-à-vis the American design to form regional alliance system in a broader perspective. Usually, President Rhee’s anti-Communist and anti-Japanese policies are described as emotional and irrational. This article suggests that his aggressive Cold War policy was in close coalition with “rollbackers” in the US. By focusing on the structure, this article intends to shed a new light on the interaction between anti-communist and anti-Japanese policies during Rhee administration.

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The main topic of discussion at the 2019 meeting of the Japan Association for Asian Studies (JAAS) was the issue of the movement of “wartime laborers” from the Korean peninsula to Japan proper. Professor Kiyoshi Aoki and Professor Hideki Okuzono gave presentations on this topic, with Professor Tetsuya Yamada, Professor Mie Oba, and the author posing questions and offering comments to the presenters. This paper summarizes the author’s comments and questions at that JAAS meeting, which focused on the importance of considering the connections, commonalities, and differences that exist in how history problems are handled across East Asia.

First, China, Korea, and Vietnam were divided during the Cold War, and each one came to rely on the use of history in order to provide it with some form of legitimacy. History problems in this region were often related to how competing factions in these divided polities sought to justify their rule based on the past. On the Korean Peninsula and across the Taiwan Strait, this historical legitimacy was often connected to resistance activities carried out against Japanese aggression and colonial occupation. However, though both Koreas have continued to assert their relative “historical legitimacy” on this basis through the present day, the Republic of China government on Taiwan began shifting its source of “historical legitimacy” from being based on the creation of a unified China to the creation of an autonomous/independent Taiwan in the 1990s.

Second, the cases of South Korea-Japan and Taiwan-Japan relations share the fact that the dissolution of the Japanese Empire and the manner in which Korea and Taiwan were subsequently decolonized had a significant impact on the construction of their history problems. In both cases, authoritarian governments negotiated with Japan to conclude peace treaties. Their broader populaces, however, were not allowed to play a significant role in such negotiations. This led to the emergence of critiques of these treaties after their democratization, with the appearance of subsequent calls to revisit the postwar settlements that their authoritarian regimes had reached.

Third, democratization in South Korea and the expansion of freedoms in China led to the emergence of new developments in how history problems were handled, with a shift toward a greater focus on individual claims for reparations against Japanese entities. The governments of neighboring countries had abandoned their ability to seek state reparations from Japan as part of the peace treaties they signed in the decades following the end of the war. However, individuals were able to seek private compensation through the Japanese judicial system from the 1980s through the 2000s, which played an important role in the resolution of a number of history problems. In Taiwan, democratization led to “Taiwanization,” creating a historical identity that included aspects of history problems that were different from South Korea’s case. Beginning around 2005, however, the Japanese Supreme Court changed its interpretation of the segment of the 1972 Sino-Japanese Joint Declaration that dealt with reparations, ultimately ruling that private citizens did not have the right to seek compensation from Japanese companies on an individual basis. This marked a significant shift in the role that Japan’s legal system played in resolving history problems.

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本稿は，韓国鉄鋼業が急速に発展を遂げた要因の一つとして，韓国最初の銑鋼一貫製鉄所である浦項製鉄所の建設における日本企業からの技術協力の効果的な学習に着目し，韓国企業がどのように製鉄所建設というエンジニアリング・プロジェクトにかかわる技術を学習していったのか，その学習のプロセスを明らかにすることを目的とする。浦項製鉄所の第1期建設では日本企業が製鉄所の基本設計から設備の詳細設計と供給，建設工事，そして操業に至るまで包括的な協力を行った。しかし，あくまでも建設の主体は韓国企業のポスコであり，ポスコの技術担当者が計画段階から建設のすべての過程に主体的に参加して技術学習の機会を得た。とくに同じ技術担当者が計画当初から継続してエンジニアリング・プロジェクトの特定分野を担当することによって，技術を効果的に学習した。このことは，ポスコがその後，独力で製鉄所を建設できるまで技術能力を高める，大きな足がかりになったと考えられる。

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How should today’s Japan-ROK relations be interpreted which is said the worst in their history? This paper discusses the logic of Moon Jae-in administration from the perspectives of its “justification” and “orthodoxy/legitimacy.”

Under the constraints of the nation’s division and the Cold War, ROK successfully maintained the “justification” of politics as a result of its democratization that took place immediately after the economic development. However, this “justification” was maintained with the lack of political “orthodoxy/legitimacy,” the dilemma of which was inevitably brought to the surface after the end of the Cold War and the democratization.

It was brought to the surface with the movement of going back their history in a way of trying to secure the “orthodoxy/legitimacy” of their politics by liquidating remnants of “pro-Japanese,” the collaborators with the Japanese colonial government. It was Moon Jae-in administration that played the central role of such movement, the administration that was born as a result of the “Candle Revolution,” which led president Park Geun-hye to her impeachment and dismiss.

President Moon Jae-in took it as his mission to establish the “orthodoxy/legitimacy” and to bring ROK back to the state of what the nation needs to be like, by eradicating deeply-rooted evils and wiping out “the pro-Japanese conservatives with vested interests.”

After the liberation, those “pro-Japanese” collaborators were supposed to be condemned, but they were instead protected under the Cold War and turned into a power of pro-Japanese conservatives with vested interests, as the mainstream of the politics and society, by colluding with the authoritarian governments for the sake of anti-communism and economic development. The true liberation and decolonization process, according to the logic, become complete only when successfully having eradicated those pro-Japanese and replaced the mainstream in order to secure the “orthodoxy/legitimacy,” which has been long absent and undiscussed.

Such movement grew into the denial of “ROK lead by conservatives,” taking place with the eradication of the deeply-rooted evils. It was not necessarily targeted at Japan but inevitably involved the issues of comfort women and forced labor as diplomatic problems, which was crucial for Moon Jae-in administration because it stands on the denial of Park Geun-hye. For Moon Jae-in, Japan-ROK normalization of diplomatic relations in 1965 lacked both “justification” and “orthodoxy/legitimacy,” which was nothing but the deeply-rooted evil.

If the eradication of pro-Japanese conservatives is expanded to the denial of ROK by conservatives, and furthermore, if Japan-ROK normalization of diplomatic relations is treated as deeply-rooted evils, it could lead to a political situation that will deny the Japan-ROK relations over the past half century and will call for a drastic reconstruction of the relations from the very beginning.

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The purpose of this paper is to elucidate the relationship between the withdrawal of Chinese People's Volunteer Army (CPVA) which was completed in 1958 and the establishment of Kim Il Sung's power base. When compared with the U. S. forces still stationed in South Korea, the CPVA withdrawal progressed smoothly upon Chinese-North Korean agreement. The CPVA withdrawal was implemented in two stage, in 1954-1955 and 1958, and suspended in 1956-1957. Why suspended in 1956-1957? According to the Chinese explanation, it was suspended upon Chinese-North Korean agreement with the shakeup within the socialist camp after the 20th Soviet Communist Party Congress in the background. However, 1956 and 1957 was a period in which Kim Il Sung established his own power base by purgeing the Chinese and Soviet factions within North Korea. In 1956, China suspended the withdrawal of CPVA to pressure Kim Il Sung who trying to eliminate the Chinese faction within North Korea. However, Kim Il Sung has almost completed purging the main members of the Chinese faction by the end of 1957. In 1958, China who judged that the revival of the Chinese faction was difficult, completely withdrew the CPVA to maintain good relations with North Korea. Afterwards, Kim Il Sung continued his all-out purge of the Chinese faction and established his power base. Therefore, the establishment of Kim Il Sung's power base and the timing of the CPVA withdrawal was closely connected. Afterwards, North Korea and China maintained good relations, but it was a delicate relationship between Kim Il Sung and China in the beginning.

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