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| Image: Flickr User - The White House |
By Kyu Seok Shim
If the United States truly wants Japan and South Korea to reconcile, it should discourage them from bickering on its own soil.
The long-awaited bilateral summit between South Korean President Park Geun-hye and Japanese Prime Minister Abe Shinzo on November 2 represented an important and positive step in the troubled relationship between the two most important American allies in the Asia-Pacific region. Though lacking substance and obstructed by disagreement on the comfort women issue, the resumption of track 1 dialogue bodes well for the possibility of further interchange between the two nations. For the Obama Administration, which has been pushing for greater cooperation among its allies in the past few years, the summit signals a positive development for its strategy of building a common front to pressure an increasingly assertive China.
Yet this ostensible goodwill comes at a time when the two East Asian nations have been engaged in a protracted public relations war in the United States, pouring money into securing influence and support from American politicians and civic groups in a manner not much more dignified than mud-slinging.
Of course, the efforts of Asian governments to accrue influence in Washington are certainly nothing new, and have been extensively analyzed by Dr. Kent Calder in his bookAsia In Washington. According to the work, in 2011 the two largest lobbying nations in Washington by number of registered lobbyists were Japan and Korea, each pursuing an extensive agenda ranging from cultural promotion to trade deals. In this respect, the efforts of these Asian governments have been largely successful, as evidenced by Japan’s recent partnership with Democratic senator-turned-lobbyist Tom Daschle and the PR firm DCI to promote the Trans-Pacific Partnership.
Since the 1980s, Tokyo has overseen one of the largest lobbying operations in the United States, spending more than $400 million annually to advance its business and political interests across a wide-ranging network that encompasses policymakers, legislators, think tanks, and civil society. South Korea has established a similar but smaller presence in Washington – apparently spending more than $40 million to support the ratification of the KORUS free trade agreement in 2010.
Controversy inevitably ensues, however, when the focus of the lobbying turns to history and politics. In early 2014, the Korean-American community in Virginia successfully lobbied its state legislature to revise references to the “Sea of Japan,” to include the “East Sea” as an alternative. In response, Tokyo hired McGuireWoods Consulting to hinder the bill while pushing its ambassador to submit a pressuring letter of protest to Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe, containing a veiled threat that the “strong economic ties between Japan and Virginia may be damaged.”
Read the full story at The Diplomat