![\"http:\/\/mindanaoexaminer.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/12\/Perry-Diaz-5-30-14-504x320.jpg\"](\"http:\/\/mindanaoexaminer.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/12\/Perry-Diaz-5-30-14-504x320.jpg\")
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Seventy years after the end of World War II, the shameful act of sexual slavery by the Japanese Imperial Army has finally come to a \u201cnegotiated\u201d end between Japan and South Korea in what many believe was driven by the geopolitical realities in the volatile East Asia.<\/p>\n
The Japan-South Korea d\u00e9tente began when Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe spoke before a joint session of the U.S. Congress on April 29, 2015.\u00a0Although he did not address the issue of \u201ccomfort women\u201d in his speech, he expressed \u201cdeep remorse\u201d for Japan\u2019s wartime conduct, saying that armed conflicts have always made women suffer the most.\u00a0 He said that he upholds previous Japanese apologies, including a 1995 landmark statement by then-Prime Minister Tomiichi Murayama who said on the occasion of the establishment of the Asian Women\u2019s Fund: \u201cThe problem of the so-called wartime comfort women is one such scar, which, with the involvement of the Japanese military forces of the time, seriously stained the honor and dignity of many women. This is entirely inexcusable. I offer my profound apology to all those who, as wartime comfort women, suffered emotional and physical wounds that can never be closed.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n But it was Abe\u2019s statement on August 14, 2015, during the 70th anniversary of Japan\u2019s defeat in 1945, that he directly addressed what the \u201ccomfort women\u201d had suffered, saying: \u201cOn the 70th anniversary of the end of the war, I bow my head deeply before the souls of all those who perished both at home and abroad. I express my feelings of profound grief and my eternal, sincere condolences.\u201d <\/em> And he promised: \u201cWe will engrave in our hearts the past, when the dignity and honor of many women were severely injured during wars in the 20th century. Upon this reflection, Japan wishes to be a country always at the side of such women\u2019s injured hearts. Japan will lead the world in making the 21st century an era in which women\u2019s human rights are not infringed upon.\u201d<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n Unthinkable event <\/strong><\/p>\n Since then, things began to move\u2026 fast.\u00a0 And on December 28, 2015, an \u201cunthinkable\u201d event \u2014 as an expert on Japan-South Korea relations calls it \u2014 happened: South Korea and Japan signed a bilateral agreement to end the issue of \u201ccomfort women,\u201d once and for all.\u00a0Yes, nobody would have imagined that the wedge that had divided Japan and South Korea for 70 years would be removed at the strike of a lightning bolt, which makes one wonder: How did it happen?<\/strong><\/p>\n As it turned out, it did not happen overnight.\u00a0 Work had been going on\u00a0 quietly \u2014 for sometime.\u00a0And while China was preoccupied with building artificial islands in the South China Sea, U.S. President Barack Obama was involved in a trilateral dialogue with Prime Minister Abe and South Korean President Park Geun-hye in the past two years.\u00a0Obama had been trying to<\/strong> bring the U.S.\u2019s two Asian allies together and forge a counterbalance to an increasingly aggressive China and a trigger-happy North Korea.\u00a0And the only way to keep the two communist allies in check is to establish a strong defensive line along the First Island Chain, which would prevent China from breaking out into the Western Pacific and beyond.\u00a0And with the newly constructed Jeju Naval Base on South Korea\u2019s southernmost island group, which is as close as it could get to China, its geostrategic location in the East China Sea couldn\u2019t have come at a more opportune time.<\/strong><\/p>\n Two Koreas at war<\/strong><\/p>\n On January 6, 2016, North Korea announced that she detonated a hydrogen bomb.\u00a0 However, international experts on thermonuclear devices have doubts that it was indeed a hydrogen bomb.\u00a0 But regardless whether an H-bomb was tested or not, North Korea\u2019s leader Kim Jong Un\u2019s propensity for threatening to nuke the U.S., South Korea and Japan could be unnerving, only because nobody knows what goes on in his mind. <\/strong><\/p>\n Two days later, North Korea released a video showing a successful test of a ballistic missile launched from a submarine. <\/strong><\/p>\n With more than five million troops, including reserves, North Korea could easily invade South Korea.\u00a0 Defending South Korea are 600,000 active frontline personnel, 2.9 million reserves, and 28,000 American troops.\u00a0 And since the U.S. and Japan have a military defence treaty, Japan would most likely go to war against North Korea, too.\u00a0 But war in the Korean peninsula wouldn\u2019t probably be limited to conventional warfare.\u00a0\u00a0 North Korea might use nuclear bombs if she already has them. <\/strong><\/p>\n <\/strong><\/p>\n Japan\u2019s nuclear stockpile<\/strong><\/p>\n But what is interesting to note is that Japan, who doesn\u2019t possess nuclear weapons at this time, could produce them if she wanted to.\u00a0 She has 47 metric tons of weapons-usable plutonium, which is enough to make nearly 6,000 warheads like the one the U.S. dropped on Nagasaki.\u00a0\u00a0 This huge cache was the by-product from reprocessing of spent uranium and plutonium used in Japan\u2019s nuclear plants, which makes one wonder: Would Japan make nuclear warheads and use them if she were threatened with nuclear extinction by North Korea?\u00a0 Well, your guess is as good as mine.\u00a0 But I think your guess is: Yes, she would.\u00a0 Who wouldn\u2019t?<\/strong><\/p>\n Geopolitical game<\/strong><\/p>\n And this begs the question: Where would China be in this fracas?\u00a0 In my opinion, China wouldn\u2019t come to the assistance of North Korea if war broke out between the two Koreas.\u00a0 North Korea has been causing China a lot of headaches for her adventurism against the U.S., South Korea and Japan.\u00a0 And Chinese President Xi Jinping knows that going to war with the U.S. is a no-win situation or, worse, a lose-lose situation.\u00a0There is so much future for China to become the number one economic superpower within a decade.\u00a0But Xi knows that China is not yet at par with the U.S. militarily\u2026 and, probably, never will be.\u00a0And if China goes to war, all the economic progress she made in the past three decades would be wasted and turn the country into a nuclear wasteland.<\/strong><\/p>\n So, what would happen if South Korea beats North Korea with the help of the U.S. and Japan, and without interference from China?\u00a0In all likelihood, the two Koreas would be reunited under a South Korean democratic<\/strong> regime.\u00a0And if China plays her cards well, she could pull a reunited Korea away from America\u2019s security shield and follow an independent course with strong economic ties to China.\u00a0As a consequence, the U.S. influence over a reunited Korea could diminish drastically.\u00a0But would the U.S. allow that to happen?\u00a0\u00a0 Not if she has to have it her way.<\/strong><\/p>\n Geopolitics could always come into play again in the future, just like how it was played up in dealing with the issue of comfort women.\u00a0Or shouldn\u2019t it be the other way around; that is, how the comfort women were played up in dealing with geopolitical issues? <\/strong>(<\/em><\/strong>PerryDiaz@gmail.com<\/em><\/a>)<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Seventy years after the end of World War II, the shameful act of sexual slavery by the Japanese Imperial Army has finally come to a \u201cnegotiated\u201d end between Japan and South Korea in what many believe was driven by the geopolitical realities in the volatile East Asia.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[52],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4216"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4216"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4216\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4216"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4216"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4216"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}