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Moon Hee-sang, speaker of South Korea’s National Assembly
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Moon Hee-sang says symbolism of emperor’s apology would help diplomatic relations
Once again, the Japanese government has asked Moon Hee-sang, speaker of South Korea’s National Assembly, to retract a statement calling for an apology from the Japanese emperor and to apologize for his statement. During his regular press conference on the morning of Mar. 27, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga mentioned the remarks that Moon made in an interview with the Hankyoreh. “The string of remarks by the speaker of South Korea’s National Assembly has been extremely inappropriate, and I don’t even want to repeat them. The director-general of the Foreign Ministry’s Bureau of Asian and Oceanian Affairs strongly protested to the assistant minister of the South Korean embassy to Japan and demanded an apology and a retraction,” Suga said. Moon addressed the controversy about his remarks in an interview that ran in the Mar. 27 edition of the Hankyoreh. “My true feelings weren’t conveyed. The gist of what I said was as follows. In the tribunal of history, there’s no statute of limitations on war crimes and crimes against humanity. The most important thing is a sincere apology. I was saying that this issue could be fundamentally resolved if Prime Minister Abe or the Japanese emperor, who carries a symbolism in Japan that’s equivalent to the prime minister, were to visit the former comfort women and say he’s sorry,” Moon told the Hankyoreh. In a related story, Suga emphasized that Japan had answered the South Korean government’s objections to Japan’s assessment of elementary school textbooks that Dokdo as “integral Japanese territory” and gloss over Japan’s role in war crimes, which was announced on Mar. 26. “It is extremely important for textbooks to contain accurate descriptions of Japan’s territory and history so that children can gain a proper understanding of them. The assessment of textbooks composed by private-sector publishers is conducted in a professional and academic manner by the Review Board for Assessing Books for Use in School [an advisory body to Japan’s Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology]. We hope that related countries will understand the purpose of our neutral assessment system,” Suga said. “Japan has provided a clear response based on its position to the positions respectively communicated by the Chinese and South Korean governments,” Suga went on to say. By Cho Ki-weon, Tokyo correspondent Please direct comments or questions to [english@hani.co.kr]
