hankyoreh

former Japanese Prime Minister

By Gil Yun-hyung, Tokyo correspondent

Former Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda sparked controversy and aroused the ire of South Korean netizens when he said that President Park Geun-hye’s foreign policy was like “a schoolgirl telling tales.”

In an interview with the Mainichi Shimbun that ran in the Jan. 10 edition, Noda was asked about Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s tendency to make comments about blocking China’s maritime expansion each time he meets a foreign leader. “It looks the same as the President of South Korea criticizing Japan in the US or Europe just like a schoolgirl telling tales,” Noda said. “China probably sees it the same way. It just goes to show that if a leader has something to say, they should meet the other leader and say it face to face. We should all stop using tattletale diplomacy.”

In Japan there has been criticism of President Park declining to have a summit with Abe and instead criticizing Japan in meetings with the leaders of other countries. Noda was essentially making the point that Shinzo Abe was himself guilty of something that Japanese had criticized other countries for doing. But South Korean netizens have responded furiously, calling the statement offensive and demanding that the South Korean government make some kind of response.

In the interview, Noda also shared the untold story about negotiations carried out with the South Korean government during his time in office in an attempt to resolve the issue of the so-called comfort women.

Speaking for the Noda administration, Chief Cabinet Secretary Tsuyoshi Saito suggested that Japan could have the Japanese Embassy in South Korea offer a direct apology to the surviving comfort women, explain the humanitarian measures that the government of Japan would adopt at a summit, and pay reparations to the women from the Japanese national budget.

“Saito mentioned these ideas, but the South Korean government did not offer a response,” Noda said. “It was shortly after this that then-president Lee Myung-bak visited Dokdo.” This is the first time that Noda has talked about the negotiations he had with the South Korean government about the comfort women.

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