Based on an article by Ruriko Kubota published in the monthly magazine Seiron, this essay examines the Moon Jae-in administration’s anti-Japanese stance and pro-China bias during the coronavirus crisis.
It highlights the South Korean government’s abnormal backlash against Japan’s entry restrictions, its excessive consideration toward China, and the political dysfunction that turned public health, a sovereign national responsibility, into a political weapon.

April 9, 2020
In matters of public health and quarantine related to the coronavirus crisis, there was no example anywhere in the world, among either developed or developing countries, of a state reacting to another country’s measures with what amounted to a groundless accusation.
The following is from an article by Ruriko Kubota published in the monthly magazine Seiron under the title “The Moon Administration Remains Thoroughly Anti-Japanese Even Amid the Coronavirus Crisis.”
She, too, is one of the finest journalists active today.
The emphases in the text, other than the headings, and the passages marked with asterisks are mine.
On April 15, South Korea is scheduled to hold a general election.
South Korea’s parliamentary system is unicameral, and there is no dissolution of the National Assembly.
The number of members of the National Assembly is fixed at 300, and elections are held once every four years.
Because South Korea has a presidential system, even if the ruling party loses, the Moon Jae-in administration will continue until 2022.
However, if the ruling party loses, it will have a major impact on the process leading to the birth of the next administration.
Amid the coronavirus crisis, some have argued that the voting day should be postponed.
In any case, however, the issue is whether President Moon’s leadership is acceptable.
Let us examine the anti-Japanese obsession and pro-China bias of the Moon administration that have been exposed in this coronavirus emergency.
“Japan Is Unscientific and Irrational”
The new coronavirus crisis is now testing the abilities of national leaders.
It was U.S. President Donald Trump who declared, “I am a wartime president.”
It was French President Emmanuel Macron who called upon his people, saying, “We are at war.”
It was German Chancellor Angela Merkel who spoke from a historical perspective, calling it “the greatest challenge since World War II.”
Yet in this emergency, the leader who brought into it the political scheme of being “pro-China and anti-Japanese” was South Korean President Moon Jae-in.
In early March, the Shinzo Abe administration imposed entry restrictions on both China and South Korea in order to prevent an explosive spread of infection in Japan.
The South Korean government reacted fiercely and laid bare its emotions.
Prime Minister Chung Sye-kyun and Foreign Minister Kang Kyung-wha described Japan’s measures as “unjust and regrettable” and said they “demanded an immediate withdrawal.”
They also criticized Japan’s public health system, saying that it was “opaque and passive” and that they were “watching with concern.”
Furthermore, they repeatedly made rude accusations, saying that Japan, by imposing entry restrictions, was “not only unfriendly but also irrational and unscientific.”
At that time, countries around the world were strengthening their quarantine measures one after another.
Europe and the United States had already begun banning entry from specific countries and closing borders.
Japan’s entry restrictions on China and South Korea could rather be described as measures that came too late.
Japan’s decision came six days before the World Health Organization, the WHO, designated the spread of the new coronavirus as a “pandemic.”
Public health and quarantine are, in the first place, sovereign matters of the state.
They are matters of the highest national interest.
If action comes too late, the lives of the entire people are at stake.
They are separate from diplomacy and do not fall into the category of something to be “discussed” with another country.
In fact, the countries that banned entry from South Korea merely notified Seoul.
They did not engage in prior consultation.
But the South Korean government did not think so.
It intensified its criticism, claiming that “there was no prior notice,” that “there was no consultation,” and that “there must be something behind it.”
In matters of public health and quarantine related to the coronavirus crisis, there was no example anywhere in the world, among either developed or developing countries, of a state reacting to another country’s measures with what amounted to a groundless accusation.
On March 5, the Japanese government decided on these measures at an emergency ministerial meeting of the National Security Council, the NSC, held at the Prime Minister’s Office.
The measures included suspending the validity of visas already issued to China and South Korea.
They also included suspending visa-exemption measures for South Korea, Hong Kong, and Macau.
They further included requesting that all entrants from China and South Korea undergo fourteen days of quarantine.
Before the meeting was held, Japan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs had informed its counterparts at the Chinese and South Korean embassies in Tokyo that Japan’s border-control measures toward the two countries would be decided, and had also conveyed an outline of their content.
After the decision, it issued formal notifications.
In response, the Chinese government stated that it “understood Japan’s entry restrictions” and did not treat them as a problem at all.
In this matter, however, the South Korean government did not stop with its reaction on the day itself.
The presidential office, the Blue House, and the Foreign Ministry went so far as to issue official documents afterward, each of them snapping at Japan.
First, the Blue House posted on its website an extraordinary document called a “written briefing,” which had the air of an excuse.
It was dated March 8.
The document was a rebuttal to criticism within South Korea that it was strange for the government to show such a hard-line stance toward Japan alone on public health and quarantine.
First, it said that Japan had conducted few coronavirus tests, that the infection situation was opaque, and that the death rate was high.
Therefore, it said, it was strange for Japan to take a hard line toward South Korea.
Second, it said that Japan’s measures were excessive, and that there had not been even a single word of prior coordination.
But this was not factual.
Japan had provided prior explanation.
Third, it said that South Korea was taking the same measures toward Japan and China, and was not taking a hard line only toward Japan.
This referred to South Korea’s special entry procedures.
The South Korean government, criticized by the media for its “anti-Japanese response,” was not satisfied with the Blue House document alone.
Ten days later, on March 15, the South Korean Foreign Ministry distributed to the South Korean media a document describing the circumstances of the day, calling it a “statement of position.”
Its contents amounted to the claim that “our country repeatedly requested prior notice, but Japan’s Foreign Ministry did not explain, which was contrary to propriety.”
The South Korean government asserted, in chronological detail, how many times it had contacted Japan’s Foreign Ministry in the morning and in the afternoon, and at what exact times, in order to claim that “Japan did not provide prior notice.”
It then appealed for the legitimacy of the government’s protest.
As the response of one national government, it was conspicuously nervous and, moreover, an obstinate act of self-justification.
What on earth did they mean by saying that the entry restrictions were “extremely inappropriate and that one cannot help but have doubts about the background”?
The “doubts” apparently meant the conjecture that “the Abe administration took a hard line toward South Korea in order to win popularity.”
But this should be called malicious speculation.
Even if one were told that their argument was an editorial from the Asahi Shimbun, no one would find it strange.
At the time Foreign Minister Kang Kyung-wha made her remarks, the number of infected people in South Korea had exceeded 6,000.
South Korea had been subjected to entry restrictions by 102 countries and regions around the world, and this was being called “Korea phobia.”
Inside South Korea, the economy was also rapidly shrinking, and public anger toward the government was intensifying, with people asking, “Why is only South Korea being made to suffer such misery?”
When Foreign Minister Kang was pressed in the South Korean National Assembly about “Korea phobia,” she defended herself by saying that many of the countries imposing entry restrictions were developing countries whose public health systems were not in order.
But just before Japan’s measures were announced, South Korea had also been subjected to entry restrictions by Australia.
Excuses no longer worked.
The government attempted to deflect the direction of public opinion through naked anti-Japanese sentiment.
In fact, before Japan’s prior notification, the South Korean government had obtained a draft paper on Japan’s border-control measures.
But a draft is only a draft.
At the ministerial meeting, the contents were revised, and stronger measures were adopted.
It seems that they included measures that South Korea had not expected.
When Japan strengthened its border-control measures at this time, it was China that was more strongly in mind.
Entry restrictions on China, the epicenter of the coronavirus crisis, had been a pending issue.
At the end of February, Yang Jiechi, a member of the Chinese Communist Party Politburo and China’s top official in charge of foreign policy, visited Japan.
Adjustments were made concerning the issue of President Xi Jinping’s state visit to Japan.
At that point, the postponement of the state visit was decided.
In response, Japan became able to take up the issue of entry restrictions on China more easily.
This article continues.
“China Is a Community of Common Destiny”
President Trump’s leadership decisions were the fastest and clearest.
The ban on the entry of Chinese nationals came on February 2.
The suspension of almost all air routes came on the same day.
The suspension of travel from twenty-six European countries came on March 11.
The declaration of a national emergency came on March 14.
The advisory for Americans to stop overseas travel came on March 19.
The idea that “protecting the people from an infectious disease” is an emergency equivalent to war is taken for granted in the West.
But the South Korean government does not think so.
President Moon’s leadership is “China before public health.”
At the Japan-South Korea summit meeting held in Beijing, China, on December 24, 2019, President Moon stated that “South Korea and China are a community of common destiny with an eternal history of exchanges.”
During the coronavirus crisis, South Korea adopted an entry ban limited to those who had visited Hubei Province within the previous fourteen days.
But at a senior Blue House meeting, Moon sent a message that sounded as if he were addressing President Xi Jinping directly, saying, “China’s difficulty is our difficulty. As a neighboring country, we must not spare any support or cooperation that we can provide.”
The first infected person in South Korea was found on January 19.
It began when the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention discovered and isolated the first infected Chinese person at an airport.
There are more than forty air routes connecting China and South Korea, and more than 20,000 people enter South Korea from China every day.
After China sealed off Wuhan on January 23, South Korea also used chartered aircraft to bring home South Koreans staying in Wuhan.
Yet the Moon administration’s pro-China posture was confused from the very beginning.
Out of excessive consideration for China, it kept wavering back and forth.
The South Korean people had from an early stage demanded a complete ban on the entry of Chinese nationals.
On January 23, a petition by an ordinary citizen demanding “a complete ban on the entry of Chinese nationals” was posted on the “National Petition Board” of the Blue House, the presidential office.
On the third day, it had gathered 200,000 supporters.
By now, it had gathered about 780,000 supporters.
One petitioner wrote, “The more I look at President Moon’s response to the new pneumonia crisis, the more I feel as if I am seeing not the president of the Republic of Korea, but the president of China.”
The media also harshly criticized the government day after day, including a JoongAng Ilbo column titled “The South Korean Government’s Self-Destructive Measures on the New Pneumonia Crisis That Are Causing Public Alienation.”
At the same time as it adopted the measure of “banning entry from Hubei Province,” South Korea raised its travel alert, which would mean a ban on travel by its citizens to all of China, from “refrain” to “withdraw.”
About four hours later, however, it suddenly downgraded “withdraw” to “under consideration.”
This reversal is believed to have been the result of protest and pressure from China.
With the first announcement of “withdraw,” the South Korean travel industry had produced numerous cancellations of trips to China.
Yet it was changed in only a few hours, throwing the travel industry into great confusion.
The Chinese ambassador to South Korea showed a displeased attitude toward the Moon administration’s entry ban from Hubei Province, saying, “I do not highly evaluate it. Would it not be enough to follow the grounds of the World Health Organization, which says that restrictions are unnecessary?”
In the first place, the Xi Jinping regime has consistently taken a high-handed attitude toward South Korea since the birth of the Moon administration.
In 2017, because South Korea had agreed in principle to the deployment of the U.S. Forces Korea’s Terminal High Altitude Area Defense system, THAAD, China retaliated through business obstruction so severe that it drove South Korea’s Lotte, which had been operating in China, to withdraw.
After that, China forced the South Korean government to accept the “Three Noes,” including the THAAD issue.
The three were as follows.
First, South Korea would not make any additional THAAD deployments.
Second, it would not participate in the U.S. missile defense system.
Third, it would not turn Japan-U.S.-South Korea cooperation into a military alliance.
In other words, they were promises that slighted the U.S.-South Korea alliance.
This occurred at the China-South Korea foreign ministers’ meeting in October 2017.
The Moon Jae-in administration accepted this.
Although THAAD for U.S. Forces Korea has been brought into South Korea, the equipment has not been fully brought in because of sit-ins by opponents, and it cannot be operated.
President Xi Jinping had been scheduled to visit South Korea in the first half of this year.
The timing was said to be March or April at the earliest.
But with the outbreak of the coronavirus crisis, a provisional postponement was decided in early February.
Yet the Moon administration seems to have feared that the visit to South Korea itself might thereby be wiped clean.
This article continues.