Intelligence deal angers Koreans

SOUTH KOREA: South Korea’s embattled government is facing accusations that it betrayed the nation to its former colonial oppressor after it agreed on an intelligence-sharing deal with Japan yesterday.

Defence officials from the two countries provisionally signed the General Security of Military Information Agreement, which will enable them to share a wide range of secrets, many of them related to the threat posed by the regime of Kim Jong Un in North Korea.

For Japan, the attraction will be the human intelligence gleaned by Seoul from sources inside the North.

For South Korea, the benefits include having indirect access to Japan’s increasingly formidable surveillance assets, including spy satellites, missile-detecting Aegis destroyers, advanced radar, and antisubmarine equipment.

‘‘The pact with Japan will help Seoul to better counter the North’s provocative acts, because Japan is located adjacent to North Korea and equipped with an array of advanced information-gathering technologies,’’ said Han Min Koo, the defence minister.

However, the agreement has provoked a political uproar in South Korea, with many people still harbouring a deep resentment of Japan because of its oppressive colonisation of the peninsula between 1910 and 1945.

Opinion polls suggest that barely 16 per cent of South Koreans support the deal, with 48 per cent opposed.

The opposition Democratic Party has threatened to impeach Han if the deal goes ahead.

‘‘Japan, which once occupied the Korean peninsula and enslaved Koreans with its military might, is still not admitting a lot of its past atrocities,’’ the party said yesterday.

‘‘This deal is an unpatriotic, humiliating deal that is opposed by our own people and not accepted by history.’’

As well as being neighbours and United States military allies, Japan and South Korea have deep cultural and business connections, but their troubled history frequently creates political disputes which are a cause of particular bitterness in Seoul.

The intelligence agreement should have been signed in 2012 but was delayed after a dispute over Japan’s claim to Tokto, an islet occupied by South Korea.

There was further anger this year when the two governments reached an agreement regarding the ‘‘comfort women’’ used as sex slaves by Japanese troops during World War II. Japan expressed ‘‘sincere apologies and remorse’’ and promised more than one billion yen compensation to the surviving women, but many South Koreans were unsatisfied.

Park Geun Hye, the president, is fighting for her political survival after revelations about the influence over state affairs exercised by a personal friend of hers.

Hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets at the weekend to demand Park’s resignation. - The Times

"Japan, which once occupied the Korean peninsula and enslaved Koreans with its military might, is still not admitting a lot of its past atrocities." Opposition Democratic Party