Ending the Internship
On December 7, the Pearl Harbor Memorial Day ceremony was held in Hawaii. It had always been a modest affair. After all, the United States had long since consolidated its national day of remembrance for fallen soldiers on Memorial Day, May 30. As a result, the December 7 commemoration of the Pearl Harbor attack had never carried the same weight. This year, however, was different.
The roster of dignitaries gathered at Pearl Harbor was nothing short of extraordinary. Yoo Jae-won was present, of course, alongside the most powerful figures in American politics. At the center of it all stood President Al Gore, freshly reelected.
When President Gore stepped onto the prepared podium, his face radiated quiet confidence. It was understandable. The 2004 presidential election had been one of the most lopsided in modern American history. From the moment he launched his reelection campaign, his approval ratings had been formidable. In the world before the regression, the United States had been fundamentally altered by 9/11. A sharp turn toward conservatism had eroded the nation's sense of itself as the world's leading power. After Bush came Obama, and after Obama came Trump. This time, 9/11 had not been prevented, but the damage had been halved, and Osama bin Laden had been captured almost in real time. The clearest proof of that divergence was Al Gore's reelection.
The Republican nominee had been Senator John McCain of Arizona. The gap in support between the two men had exceeded twenty points. McCain had never truly wanted the nomination; he had been all but drafted into running. For the Republican Party, the election had been a nightmare.
The secret to Gore's impregnable support lay in the economy. The recovery that had begun in the late 1990s had continued steadily through his first term. There had been no budget black hole like the Iraq War, and the shale revolution was unfolding faster than anyone had anticipated. Even when oil prices rose because of instability in the Middle East, the United States had felt almost no impact, thanks to shale. President Gore, an ardent environmentalist, had harbored serious reservations about shale development because of groundwater contamination and other ecological concerns. Yet once hydraulic fracturing was upgraded to gas fracturing and the groundwater issue was largely resolved, and once rising oil prices became entangled with Middle East politics, even he had been forced to accept shale development.
Ironically, the environmental side effects of shale gas had become one of John McCain's few attack lines. With so little else to criticize about Gore, the Republican candidate had been reduced to attacking the oil industry itself.
When the votes were counted on November 2, there had been no surprises. Out of 538 electoral votes, Al Gore secured 375 to McCain's 163. His margin was even larger than in 2000. His support was rock solid.
That such a president had chosen to attend the Pearl Harbor Memorial Day ceremony carried enormous weight. For Japan, still reeling from the August release of The Pacific, the event felt like a finishing blow. When photographs of Al Gore and Yoo Jae-won standing side by side with solemn expressions were released afterward, Japanese media covered them extensively.
“Still, it will take time before anything actually changes.”
Yoo Jae-won spoke cynically as he read the article on the iWorks notebook resting on his lap. The memorial ceremony had just concluded, and he was en route to his next appointment. Already the internet was flooded with coverage. The speed was nearly instantaneous. Reporters filed stories from the scene, newspapers and media sites updated immediately, and Nextcom's news page forwarded them in real time. Every media company now understood that the race for breaking news determined clicks, and even Japan's traditionally conservative newspapers had joined the competition. Thanks to them, Japanese readers could follow the Pearl Harbor ceremony in real time.
Yet Yoo Jae-won felt little satisfaction. From August until now, the controversies sparked by the Pacific War had continued without pause, but Japan's fundamental attitude had not shifted. If anything, Tokyo had made its displeasure plain by indefinitely postponing South Korea's inclusion on the white list of countries granted most-favored-nation trade status. Its rightward drift remained unchanged. In Korea, the Grand National Party had begun warning that confronting Japan would bring no benefit.
While Japan's leadership remained rigid, the public mood was not entirely unmoved. Prime Minister Koizumi's approval rating had been steadily declining. It had fallen below 50 percent by the end of October and into the mid-40s by the end of November. If it dropped into the 30s, a vote of no confidence would become almost inevitable. The problem was that no viable alternative to the Liberal Democratic Party had yet emerged. The Democratic Party was the most frequently mentioned option, but it lacked a clear center of gravity and could not command solid support. Even if it somehow took power, most of its members were former LDP politicians, so little would truly change.
Yoo Jae-won had never expected The Pacific and its accompanying documentary to trigger a wholesale national conversion in Japan. Simply puncturing the bubble of international goodwill that had long surrounded the country was achievement enough. Most satisfying of all was that the Rising Sun Flag had been placed on the same moral level as the Nazi swastika, making it far less likely to appear in television, film, or commercial collaborations.
Still, there were results left for him to secure.
A short while later, Yoo Jae-won's party passed through extraordinarily tight security and was escorted to a private location. Even the usual security detail had been left behind; only Chief of Staff Kim Dae-seok accompanied him, and even he was asked to wait outside the final doorway. The precautions were extreme, but the person waiting inside warranted them.
“Ah, Chairman Yoo! Welcome!”
When the door opened, the man greeting him with a bright smile was none other than President Al Gore.
“First, I want to say thank you.”
Once the lively welcome had subsided and the two men sat facing each other, Gore spoke first. He was acknowledging and expressing gratitude for Yoo Jae-won's contribution to his decisive reelection victory.
The exceptionally healthy state of the American economy, the envy of the world, was not something Yoo Jae-won could have achieved alone. Even if ID Group's share of the vast U.S. economy was only three percent, that figure already represented an enormous concession. Yet it was Yoo Jae-won who had provided the decisive turning points—from the Middle East crisis and the capture of Osama bin Laden to the acceleration of shale gas development. The list had been repeated so often that it had become tiresome. Deploying TokTok and other social media platforms during the campaign to reach the internet generation had also proven highly effective. John McCain's side had been left with no issues of its own and had been forced to play catch-up, resulting in the overwhelming margin.
“I'm the one who should be grateful,” Yoo Jae-won replied.
“Hmm? For what?”
“The Rising Sun program.”
“Ah, the special documentary that aired on NBC last Sunday.”
Al Gore nodded as if it were nothing of consequence. The NBC documentary, compiled from America's secret diplomatic and intelligence archives, had delivered a fatal blow to Japan's attempt to wield the Korea-Japan Basic Treaty as an all-purpose shield. The treaty itself had been revealed as an unequal agreement imposed under duress by the United States and Japan acting in concert. Of course, Korea could not claim to be an innocent victim either; the documents had also exposed how President Park had used the hard-won loans to grant favors to former enemy companies while lining his own pockets. It was a dark chapter the United States would have preferred to keep buried. Moreover, the American president at the time had been Democrat Lyndon Johnson, so mishandling the matter could have created political difficulties for Al Gore, who had only just secured his own reelection. That the program had nevertheless aired without obstruction was thanks to Gore's tacit approval.
“Heh. Japan made quite a fuss, but Korea is no longer an ordinary partner.”
The single sentence carried enormous implications. Although Korea and the United States were allies, Japan had always ranked higher in Washington's priorities. Among America's allies, the closest were the so-called Five Eyes nations bound by the UKUSA Agreement for military intelligence sharing: the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, with the United States at the center. These four countries enjoyed a level of trust far beyond that extended to allies like Korea or Japan. Unofficially, Israel was sometimes counted as a sixth member. Until the 2000s, Korea had occupied the lowest rung among America's allies. Without the division of the peninsula after the Korean War, the alliance itself might never have formed. Consequently, Washington's treatment of Seoul had been the most parsimonious. When it came to acquiring cutting-edge American weapons, Korea was often placed at the back of the line or told certain systems were simply unavailable.
The shift in America's attitude had begun with Yoo Jae-won's appearance. The United States was a nation perpetually hungry for talent, willing to offer extraordinary incentives to secure the world's brightest minds. Those minds, once acquired, became assets serving American national interests. Yoo Jae-won had been no exception. Washington had cleared the way for his unprecedented economic activities in the United States, enabling ID Group's extraordinary growth. Had the U.S. government chosen to protect Microsoft or impose restrictions on the Comcast acquisition in the name of safeguarding domestic industry, ID Group would have required far more time to reach its current scale.
“I have always been grateful for America's consideration,” Yoo Jae-won said plainly.
“However, I hope this consideration will not remain a one-time event but will continue in a systematic manner.”
“Hmm. Systematic? That I did not expect.”
Al Gore's expression grew slightly troubled. Continuing to favor Korea on an ongoing basis carried real political costs. Japan's international standing and role could not be ignored. A resolution condemning the comfort women system had passed the House of Representatives without difficulty, yet the Senate response had been lukewarm. Passage in the House was meaningful, but real diplomatic power in the United States resided in the Senate. Japan had mounted a desperate lobbying campaign to prevent the resolution from reaching that chamber. The LDP and Prime Minister Koizumi apparently considered blocking it a major victory and were now pressing their advantage. Unfortunately for them, Yoo Jae-won had little use for such gestures.
What he wanted was for the United States to shift the center of its East Asia strategy from Japan to the Korean Peninsula. Once that happened, a Japan reduced to an afterthought would no longer be able to maintain its previous coercive posture.
“Korea has been an intern for more than half a century. It has more than proven its capabilities. I believe it is time to end the internship.”
Relations between nations were supposed to be based on mutual benefit. Reality was different. Power dynamics always shaped international diplomacy. Korea's grand ambition had been to become the balancer of East Asia, but in practice it had been reduced to performing the United States' dirty work. To Yoo Jae-won, the situation resembled an intern desperate for a full-time position—except this intern had always been forced to yield ground to the star pupil named Japan.
The landscape had changed. A small number of U.S. troops were now stationed in North Korea, and there were no North Korean nuclear weapons. Meanwhile, Japan, which had once served as America's proxy in East Asia, had suffered a devastating blow to its moral credibility because of the war-crimes controversies ignited by The Pacific. Korea now possessed both the qualifications and the conditions to demand an end to its internship and an upgrade in the level of the alliance. Doing so would also maximize Yoo Jae-won's own interests, given his unique position straddling both countries.