The Gap Enlargement Mechanism between Korean-Japanese Perceptions: Focusing on the Comfort Women Agreement (2015.12.28)

The primary focus of this paper is to analyze the trend of Japanese media reports on the Republic of Korea (hereafter Korea)-Japan comfort women agreement (hereafter the “12.28 Agreement”) from Dec. 28, 2015 to highlight the clear gap between Korean and Japanese perspectives. Regarding the 12.28 Agreement, the Japanese media seems to have two traits. First, the Japanese media is not homogeneous, and the differences between the liberals and conservatives are straightforward. Whereas the liberal media emphasizes cooperation and the essence of the agreement between two countries, conservative newspapers limit the responsibility of problem- solving to the Korean government and emphasize the framing of a final, irreversible settlement. Second, despite the variety of opinions within Japan on the matter, an overwhelming view exists in Korea where the conservative viewpoint of the Japanese newspapers is magnified and mass reproduced. This influence is on behalf of the conservative Japanese newspapers, namely Sankei Shimbun, more frequently reporting on the comfort women issue with the intention of impacting nationalism upon the public and arousing diplomatic concerns. We can assume the Korean media frequently take quotes from these reports, therefore creating a mechanism of an increase in opinions from the Japanese conservatives within the Korean media. Moreover, the changes in Japan’s media environment and the strategies of Japanese conservative politicians are combined to create the phenomenon of “Japanese Liberalism,” which still resides, yet simply fails to reach the Korean society.