[120221] ‘It’s not a good time – hold back for a while.’

‘It’s not a good time – hold back for a while.’

Humiliating diplomacy: Is the truth getting out of the cloud of lies?

“It’s not a good time – hold back for a while. (지금은 곤란하다 – 조금만 기다려달라.)”

It may sound just part of a normal dialogue. When put in a specific context, however, – especially in a deep-rooted animosity between two neighboring countries – it could turn pretty much shameful and humiliating.

Since it was first reported four years ago, this short sentence has become a trendy way of sarcasm about President Lee Myung-bak and his administration despite their repeated denial that the head of state has actually made such remarks.

South Korean President Lee Myung-bak, left, talks with
then-Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda in 2008.

It goes back to July 9, 2008, when Lee sat down for talks with then-Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda on the sidelines of a G8 summit in Japan. Both in their early months in office since election in 2007, the two leaders somehow had to show guts in front of their respective people in dealing with some thorny issues.

Not all the details of the behind-the-scenes talks were made public at once. But it took only several days before a Japanese newspaper allowed people in a July 15 report to have a glimpse of the humiliating summit diplomacy.

In response to the Japanese government’s imminent move to include Dokdo in school books, according to the Yomiuri Shimbun, the South Korean president asked the Japanese premier to “hold back” for a while – instead of telling a definite “no.”

Dokdo, seated in the sea between the two neighboring countries, has been a source of on-again, off-again diplomatic feuds, as Tokyo has laid claim on the set of islets which has been effectively occupied by South Korea for decades.

If Lee really made such an “acquiescent” remark, some critics argued, it could be a serious dereliction of duty since the head of state, who also serves as the supreme commander of the armed forces, has to protect the national sovereignty. Lee, of course, denied the report.

While the case led to a legal battle that ended in the president’s favor, the controversy did not die down easily. And, about four years on, the latest round has just opened early this week – with a more undeniable diplomatic document of the WikiLeaks. (Read the WikiLeaks document both in Korean and English)

According to a Feb. 20, 2012, report by The Kyunghyang Shinmun, which obtained the full document, an official at the South Korean embassy in Tokyo told his Japanese counterpart on July 16, 2008, that Tokyo’s move was “very, very serious,” “enormous,” and “explosive.” (See Kyunghyang Shinmun report)

South Korean Embassy First Secretary Kang Young-hoon is quoted in the document (drafted and sent from a U.S. diplomat in Tokyo to Washington) as telling his Japanese counterpart that “Seoul officials felt a sense of ‘betrayal’ particularly after Lee directly appealed to Fukuda to ‘hold back’ on the textbook issue.”

If two sides are telling different stories about one shared thing, at least one of them must be lying. But it seems that this game of truth won’t come to a close until the other side, or Fukuda, opens up his mouth, which is very unlikely in the world of diplomacy.

But there is no such thing as a “lie forever.” If one dares, here’s the famous quote by Abraham Lincoln, the 16th president of the U.S. (1809 - 1865): “You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all of the time.”


By pushahead
February 22, 2012

*Ah! Almost missed the opportunity to give you a nugget of information which might be a clue to this South Korean president’s puzzling remark: Lee Myung-bak was born in 1941 in Osaka, Japan (not on the Korean Peninsula), as his family had emigrated to Japan in 1929 under the colonial rule. His Japan name is known as Akihiro Tsukiyama (月山明博). (Check more about Akihiro Tsukiyama, or Lee Myung-bak)