‘Pro-Japanese traitors’: South Korea’s Yoon slammed over wartime whitewashing

The controversy erupted after Yoon, in a notable break from tradition, focused his address commemorating Korea’s 1945 liberation from Japanese colonial rule on the need to promote reunification with the North and address human rights abuses by Pyongyang – all but glossing over Tokyo’s responsibility for past misdeeds.

“It’s outrageous that the Yoon government is ignoring the sentiments of the Korean people while seemingly advocating for Japan,” Han Min-soo, a spokesman for the main opposition Democratic Party of Korea (DPK), said in a statement on Sunday.

“Is it the Yoon government’s idea of justice to not hold the perpetrator accountable if they refuse to apologise?”

The fallout only intensified the next day, when Yoon’s security adviser Kim Tae-hyo declared that pressing Japan for an apology over its wartime past was futile as long as Tokyo had no intention of doing so – a remark that triggered a separate backlash.

The Yoon administration’s attempts to defend its stance only seemed to further inflame the controversy, with a senior official from the presidential office appearing to justify Japan’s position and suggest there was “fatigue” in Tokyo over dealing with its wartime history.

“We should strongly criticise and seek to correct Japan if it ignores historical issues and refuses to acknowledge them,” said Kim, the first deputy chief of the Presidential Office’s National Security Office, during a televised interview in which he acknowledged that Japan had issued repeated apologies, implying that the country could no longer be expected to continually atone for its past misdeeds.

“But what matters is Japan’s intent. If you force an apology from someone who doesn’t genuinely feel it, can that apology be considered sincere?”

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