The chairman of South Korea’s version of the U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee has expressed hope that the nuclear agreement with Iran could provide "lessons" to the communist regime in North Korea.
Jin Ha Hwang, chairman of the National Defense Committee of the National Assembly of the Republic of Korea, also told Newsmax he believes historic tensions between his country and Japan can ease as South Korean President Park Geun-hye and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe continue their recent dialogue.
"Iran can be a positive player in the world and the agreement to keep from developing a nuclear bomb in return for the ending of sanctions can be desirable," Hwang told Newsmax during a break at a forum in Washington hosted by the Korean Economic Institute of America.
Hwang believes that just as Iran can achieve economic gains by not building a nuclear bomb, "there are lessons [this agreement] can deliver to North Korea, such as the advantages there would be to a denuclearized North Korea."
Hwang’s chairmanship of the National Defense Committee makes him South Korea’s counterpart to Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John McCain. Like McCain, Hwang spent most of his adult life in the uniform of his country before winning elective office.
During 39 years in the Republic of Korea's army, he rose to the rank of lieutenant general and his positions included commander of the United Nations Peacekeeping Force in Cyprus from 2002 to 2003, and defense attaché in the Korean Embassy in Washington, D.C., from 1998 to 2001.
He is a graduate of the Korea Military Academy and holds a master’s degree in public administration from Central Michigan University.
Asked whether a thawing of historic tensions between South Korea and Japan had begun following the recent meeting between President Park and Prime Minister Abe during the funeral of Singapore’s former Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew, Hwang replied: "I hope so and I think so. There should be no personal reason for Koreans not to keep a good dialogue with Mr. Abe."
Observers of the relationship between South Korea and Japan almost universally cite as a stumbling block the attitude of many modern Japanese politicians to their country’s role in World War II.
Members of Abe’s cabinet continually pay homage at the Yasukuni Shrine, whose honorees include several Class-A war criminals executed after World War II. And Abe himself has offered qualified apologies for Japan’s wartime activity that critics sharply contrast with Chancellor Angela Merkel’s efforts to express sorrow to the world for Germany under Hitler.
Some Japanese government officials have voiced similar hopes to Hwang’s for a better working relationship between Tokyo and Seoul.
In an interview with Newsmax during Abe’s visit to the United States in April, Yasuhisa Kawamura, director general for press and public diplomacy for the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, recalled to us how Park’s father, the late President Park Chung-hee, and Abe’s grandfather, Japanese Prime Minister Nobusuke Kishi, were friendly and worked well together when they held their respective country’s highest offices in the early 1960s.
John Gizzi is chief political columnist and White House correspondent for Newsmax.
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