SEOUL, March 2 (Yonhap) — The main opposition Democratic Party (DP) on Thursday lashed out at President Yoon Suk Yeol’s speech on relations with Tokyo, calling it a “democracy of humiliation” with Japan.
Marking the anniversary of a 1919 uprising against Japan’s colonial rule on Wednesday, Yoon delivered the speech that Japan has transformed from a “militaristic aggressor of the past” into a “partner that shares the same universal values” with South Korea.
“The president’s speech denied the spirit of the national foundation and the noble spirit of resistance stipulated in the Constitution of the Republic of Korea on the day all of its people had resisted against Japan’s colonial rule,” DP floor leader Park Hong-keun said in a party meeting.
“We only reconfirmed the Yoon Suk Yeol government’s subservient democracy with Japan … There cannot be a normal improvement of ties with servile democracy that takes a submissive attitude one-sidedly without correcting the wrongdoings of the Japanese government,” Park added.
Park called on Yoon to apologize to the people for making such a speech, claiming it shows the president believes in Tokyo’s justification that its colonization led to Seoul’s development.
“It was like a Japanese prime minister giving a March 1 Independence Movement day speech,” Park Jie-won, an adviser to the DP and a former chief of the National Intelligence Service, said in a radio interview.
The minor opposition Justice Party leader Lee Jeong-mi also said a country’s ruler’s wrong concept of history can wreck the diplomatic strategy, noting Seoul-Tokyo relations should be based on “Japan’s thorough introspection and self-reflection.”
The relationship between the two countries has frayed due to historic issues, including wartime forced labor and sexual slavery, stemming from Japan’s colonization of the Korean Peninsula from 1910-1945.
Source: Yonhap News Agency