Disdain for Japan – not the Olympics – unifies the two Koreas

As Canadians, we know Olympic rivalries can be intense. You wouldn't want to be caught on the ice between our women's hockey team and its U.S. counterpart. But when our athletes go for gold, it's usually in the name of personal bests and the Olympic ethos of faster, higher, stronger. That often makes us oblivious to the politics that, for other countries, defines the Games.

For East Asians, for instance, this Winter Olympics has been fraught with geopolitical risk and unsettling symbolism as goodwill gestures between North and South Korea raise prospects for rapprochement, if not reunification, while causing heartburn for their neighbours in the region.

Relations between Japan and South Korea are touchy at the best of times, given Japan's past colonization of the Korean peninsula and the feeling among Koreans that Japan has not fully made amends for the atrocities of the Second World War. The leaders of South Korea and Japan, both strong U.S. allies, have typically worked behind the scenes to co-operate on security issues while publicly pandering to anti-Japanese and anti-Korean sentiment within their respective countries.

While the sight of North and South Korean athletes marching together at the opening ceremony of the Pyeongchang Games warmed more than a few naive Western hearts, many Japanese feared any growing complicity between the Koreas would come at their expense. After all, if there is anything that unites North and South Koreans more than language and culture, it's their shared antipathy toward Japan.

That was evident as the unified Korean women's hockey team took on Japan this week. Neither team is a serious medal contender but the animosity between them and their respective fans made the Canada-U.S. rivalry look as genteel as lawn bowling in comparison.

The Japanese team won 4-1. Diplomats feared an international incident.

The feeling in Washington and most world capitals is that the last thing the world needs is for North and South Koreans to commiserate in their renewed humiliation at the hands of a common enemy, destabilizing security relationships in East Asia. Recently elected South Korean President Moon Jae-in already created indigestion in diplomatic circles by stoking anti-Japanese sentiment last month while Washington was seeking to build a common front with South Korea and Japan against the unpredictable and nuclear-capable North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un.

In January, Mr. Moon called for a renewed apology from Japan over the Japanese military's involvement in forcing Korean girls and women to work as sex slaves during the Second World War. There are now only about three dozen surviving victims, known euphemistically as "comfort women." Japan and South Korea had agreed in 2015 on a "final and irreversible" settlement in which Japan formally apologized to the women and agreed to pay for their care. But the deal was unpopular in South Korea and Mr. Moon campaigned promising to undo it.

He has stopped short of that, but last month called on Japan to "apologize with wholehearted sincerity to the victims and take this as a lesson so as to avoid the recurrence of such atrocities by making efforts in conjunction with the international community." That angered Japanese nationalists, who pressured Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to skip the Olympics opening ceremony. He attended, but did not rise to applaud when the unified Korean team entered the stadium.

South Korean pride was further insulted when NBC commentator Joshua Cooper Ramo, an accomplished China scholar who should have known better, remarked on-air during the opening ceremony that "every Korean will tell you that Japan is a cultural, technological and economic example that has been so important to their own transformation." The comment sparked outrage in South Korea and an apology by NBC.

While South Korea's spectacular industrial development lagged Japan's by two decades, and Japan paid millions to South Korea under a 1965 treaty, few South Koreans would ever describe Japan as a model for anything but aggression.

South Koreans were not celebrating when Mr. Abe was re-elected in an October landslide, potentially emboldening the Japanese leader to proceed with a plan to change his country's pacifist constitution and adopt a more hawkish defence policy. The move is aimed at putting Russia, China and North Korea on notice that Japan will not rely solely on U.S. forces to provide for its defence against its regional adversaries. But the prospect of a more militaristic Japan unnerves South Koreans.

After all, their country spent much of the first half of the 20th century under Japanese occupation, and the memories of that period still inform South Korean politics. Cozying up to North Koreans, if only for the Olympics, is one way of reminding the Japanese that they haven't forgotten.