United States mediation in South Korean-Japanese negotiations, 1951-1965: A case study in the limitations of embassy diplomacy

The United States is, of course, an outsider in South Korean-Japanese relations but realistically speaking, it is more than a bystander. The fact that the United States maintains defense commitments with both countries invariably involves it in South Korean-Japanese relations. Such a position often enables the United States to play important roles in facilitating cooperation between the two countries. Clearly, it is in the United States' interests that South Korea and Japan cooperate more actively in all aspects of security, economic and political relations. When both countries were not totally independent in their conduct of foreign policy during the 1950s, the United States was in a position to intervene directly in South Korean-Japanese relations. What the United States did, therefore, was to encourage a partnership and build a positive atmosphere for mutual cooperation mainly through its good offices and diplomatic mediation efforts in the negotiation for normalization of diplomatic relations between the two countries.; Seen in the light of global and regional tensions, the issues of contention in South Korean-Japanese relations after World War II became not merely bilateral but also multilateral, deeply involving the United States. When issues directly affected not only the Japanese but also Americans and South Koreans, the United States asserted and clarified its own interests and position. For the sake of peace, stability, and prosperity in East Asia, the United States was compelled to do whatever it could to reconcile differences and encourage cooperation between South Korea and Japan.; This study is a modest attempt to describe, analyze, and interpret diplomatic efforts that the United States made to resolve the conflict between South Korea and Japan during the 1950s and early 1960s. In studying the process of this mediation, this work focuses on the diplomatic struggle among South Korea, the United States, and Japan, focusing on the interactions between the U.S. State Department and the U.S. embassies in Seoul and Tokyo.; The thesis of this work is that U.S. policy regarding relations between South Korea and Japan during the 1950s, which was designed to develop friendly relations for mutual cooperation between them, ended in failure mainly due to the limitations on embassy diplomacy. The U.S. State Department vainly hoped that the difficult relations between the two countries could be ameliorated by the diplomatic efforts of its embassies in Seoul and Tokyo. South Korean-Japanese relations after World War II, however, were not the sort that could be improved with the efforts of diplomats such as ambassadors, because of the emotional hatred between the two nations that had developed in the course of their unhappy history, beginning with Japanese invasions in the sixteenth century and culminating in its colonial rule in the early twentieth century. The success of negotiations for normalization required a higher level of diplomats who had prestige and influence to persuade the leaders of the two countries to make mutual concessions.; In the course of analysis, an effort is made to explore the interactions, experiences, and prejudices among the South Koreans, Americans, and Japanese, and to define the significant diplomatic issues and problems that delayed a final resolution until 1965. Special consideration is given to the role of the American diplomats who served in Seoul and Tokyo, since they were crucial in transmitting and enforcing U.S. policy toward South Korean-Japanese relations.