Reshaping Japan-Korea Relations: Transnational Advocacy Networks and the Politics of Redress

Abstract

History problems remain the major bone of contention in contemporary Japan-South Korea relations. Paradoxically, while their historical roots in Japan’s colonization of the Korean peninsula have gradually receded, the diplomatic friction surrounding them has grown ever more intense. The post-Cold War era in particular has witnessed a marked surge in bilateral contention over the burden of the past.

Challenging conventional state-centric and national conceptions of history problems, this dissertation explains the paradox as a rise in contentious activism in Japan and Korea that began against a backdrop of democratization in the late 1980s. Driving this trend were the Korean victims of Japanese colonial and wartime policies, intent on exacting redress for their historical ordeals, and their support networks in Korea and Japan. Based on extensive fieldwork in both countries, it argues that the essential dynamics of these victim-centric history problems have evolved not along national lines, but between the two governments on the one hand, and transnational advocacy networks anchored in Japan and Korea, on the other. The pressure tactics of these networks have become increasingly effectual over time, manifesting as a new logic for the bilateral relationship: one in which citizens are now agents in shaping state-to-state interaction.

Drawing on case studies of Korean A-bomb victims, comfort women and forced laborers, the dissertation aims to explicate the influence of advocacy networks on inter-state behavior. It investigates the question: under what conditions and by what means do transnational advocacy networks affect the way that states interact? Through this inquiry it also establishes why certain networks have greater bearing on state-to-state relations than others.

The analysis finds that among the array of tactics employed by transnational advocacy networks, those most likely to affect state-to-state interaction are: disclosure of inculpatory evidence; framing a grievance as a human rights issue; engaging external governments and international bodies; and litigation. In addition to (but not mutually exclusive of) these means, the conditions under which advocacy networks most affect state-to-state interaction are when: the target state is the sole culprit; the target state’s economic interests in the addressee state become threatened; and when a bilateral treaty clause is overturned.

By establishing a causal connection between advocacy networks and inter-state behavior, this study offers novel insights into the fraught diplomatic trajectory of post-Cold War Japan-Korea relations, addresses a lacuna in the scholarship on history problems, and builds on the theoretical understanding of the role of transnational advocacy networks in international politics.