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Japan

What does it mean to apologize? 

Imagine a scenario between Bob, the "victimizer", and Alice, the "victim" of some event, E. 

Alice expresses that Bob should apologize. But Bob retorts, oh my God, what do you want me to do? I'm sorry okay? I already bought you dinner that one night to make up for it, why are you still upset about it, and besides that was like three months ago? Really what do you want me to do about it, when will you get over this? Can you please just forget about it and like, never talk about it again? 

When Bob asks "what do you want me to do about it" the assumption is that it's Alice's job to teach Bob how to apologize properly. I suppose it's also Alice's job to teach Bob how to be an empathetic human being and learn to listen, really listen, to why Alice is upset.

Unsurprisingly none of this makes Alice feel any better about it or forget it. Worse still, the longer this goes on, Alice is sure that Bob will feel even more justified in using the "that was X months ago" excuse. 

Not only that, the following week Bob has a total change of heart and refuses to talk about E at all, refusing to admit any sort of responsibility. 

Throughout all of this Bob's close friend Charles wants to have an opinion about the matter and takes Bob's side. Bob, after all, supplies a lot of Charles' electronics through his store and even draws him really cool cartoons. I mean never mind that Charles once literally blew up Bob's place, it's all in the past anyhow. 

Anyways, Charles comes in saying that Alice should forgive Bob because I mean, Bob really did buy her that expensive dinner and he's a real nice guy, honestly and he's done so much for her so just be reasonable, okay? In private, Charles and Bob discuss how unreasonable Alice is being, sometimes surmising that Alice may just be trying to manipulate Bob into feeling bad, or even trying to extort him. 

Alice is left trying to justify her feelings to them by listing out those things Bob hasn't done. She mentions how Bob keeps waffling back and forth, says things which suggest he hasn't learned a thing and even contradicts the apologies he's made before, and most importantly constantly tries to avoid the subject or is more interested in burying/forgetting the past than actually confronting, resolving, and committing to that resolution.* 

But Alice knows that these are not the main point -- the real diagnosis being that Bob is not taking Alice's feelings seriously and listening to her, made clear by the above list, and the fact that whenever Alice tries to talk about how she feels, the automatic reaction from Bob (and Charles) is to doubt her or talk about why her feelings are wrong. The assumption, of course, being that Alice is being petty or manipulative. 

On the national level, is an apology any different? Just because it is between two groups of people rather than two people, does it mean that feelings are not involved? Is it only a formal act, involving reparations and a formal statement, maybe a monument or two, a footnote in the history books, and it's over and done with? 

When you apologize and the other person is still hurting, the move is not to say "well I apologized already so if something's still wrong you're the problem". What changes when you take this to the group, national level? 

It is a highly non-empathetic act to, as the apologizer, to set the terms of the "apology" yourself, and expect that the victim feel better about it. It is straight up offensive to explicitly cast doubt on the victim and their feelings on the matter. This often takes the form of saying things like "But I already apologized" or "Get over it already", which directly implies that the victim is being either petty or manipulative. And really, in what kind of apology is that the move? 

In my personal opinion, which I believe many share in this instance, I don't think the victim has to provide "facts and logic" to justify why they are feeling bad about something. If they feel that a particular apology was insufficient, that's because it was. At the very least, if they are incapable of apologizing properly, the apologizer shouldn't say or do anything to make it even worse. And third parties incapable of feeling how the apologizee feels should mostly stay out of it if not to offer general support. 

Is it possible that the Koreans government and Korean people are deliberately trying to make themselves feel worse, victimized? Sure. But I wonder why that is the natural conclusion for some people. It seems really off. 

You know, isn't it weird that collectively, Jews don't actively protest and say angry things about Germany, at least not to the extent that Koreans do about Japan? It can't be, can it, that Germany actually properly apologized, that their government and history books are consistently transparent about the matter, or that they have an amazing track record of atonement and establishing anti-fascist policy in government and education despite the lingering anti-Semitism of some? It's not anything to do with the fact that the conservative Japanese government is and has always been far too prideful and nationalistic to admit that their country has any history of wrongdoing, much less war crimes, rape, torture, massacre and that as a result their people are barely educated on the subject? No, of course not! It has to be Korea itself which is the matter.