By Steven Denney
The initial response on social media was overwhelmingly negative.
In Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s much anticipated speech on the 70th anniversary of Japan’s surrender to end World War II (read the full text in English), Abe encouraged Japan’s postwar generations to move on and not feel as if they must continually apologize for a war they did not start.
While he affirmed that previous apologies and expressions of remorse “will remain unshakable into the future,” he did not renew those apologies or offer any new ones, as some in neighboring countries, particularly China and South Korea, had hoped. Indeed, media coverage across the board note Abe’s carefully crafted speech “stops short of new apology.” Martin Fackler, former Tokyo bureau chief for the New York Times, writes via Twitter, “Emerging media consensus is that Abe repeated #Japan’s past #WWII apologies, but didn’t offer new one of his own.”
What specifically is the Korean news media saying about Abe’s apology-less speech? I surveyed my Korean media list on Twitter to get a sense of how the speech was received.
The list contains 17 members, including media outlets that span the entire political spectrum, from the conservative Chosun Ilbo to the consistently left-leaning Voice of the People. I looked only at the Korean-language media, under the assumption that coveragein Korean about Korea is more comprehensive. (English-language coverage, good though it is at times, shows only a snippet of coverage of any given issue, and often no coverage at all.)
Read the full story at The Diplomat