1

Factors influencing apology strategy and apology response: A case study of

sexual crime conflict between South Korea and Vietnam.
(Word count: 3886)

Introduction
In the Vietnam War initiated by the US army, South Korea government sent a
mercenary troop of more than three hundred thousand men to the battlefield with an
aim of becoming allies with and earning investments from the United States (Lee,
2013). The South Korean troop is reported to have not only perpetrated massacres
in the countryside but also committed sexual crime to Vietnamese women and
female children (Kwon, 2006; Larsen & Collins Jr., 2005; Ku, 1999). Since the
diplomatic normalisation between the two nations, South Korea’s government has
delivered two unofficial apologies to Vietnam and the victims (Nam, 2013; Choi,
2017). Vietnam’s government, on the other hand, has remained a neglectful attitude
towards both attempts, demonstrating neither complete acceptance nor rejection
(Choi, 2017).
This essay argues that there exist specific factors that influence South Korea’s
choice of apology strategies and Vietnam’s choice of response. Using multiple
frameworks proposed by Kampf (2008, 2009), Blum-Kulka and Olshtain (1984), and
Saleem et al. (2021), this essay will analyse Korea’s apologies and Vietnam’s
corresponding responses to categorise which strategies have been applied. Then, by
providing supporting evidence including historical contexts and relationship between
the two nations, this essay will attempt to explain which factors might have
influenced the two nations’ choice of strategies. By the end of the essay, the
following research questions should have been answered:
• What are South Korea’s apology strategies and what are Vietnam’s
response strategies?
• Which factors have influenced their choice of strategies?

Methodology
Apology was introduced by Brown and Levinson (1987) as a negative
politeness strategy used by the speaker to alleviate face-threatening acts (p.187).
Particularly, by offering an apology, the speaker indicates his or her reluctance to
 2

invade the listener’s will of autonomy or need of space, therefore redressing the
impingement (Brown & Levinson, 1987: 188). In intercultural communication, it has
been continuously studied and developed by numerous scholars, whether in terms of
definition (Lazare, 2005; Holmes, 1990) or apology strategies that vary across
languages and cultures (Brown & Levinson, 1987; Olshtain & Cohen, 1983;
Masaeed, Waugh & Burns, 2018).
According to Kampf (2009), the term public (non-)apology emerged at the
beginning of 1990s as a result of apologies being used at an increasing frequency as
‘a common device for image restoration’ (Kampf, 2009: 2257). Blum-Kulka and
Olshtain (1984) came up with two major strategies, including direct and indirect
apologies, and pointed out several factors influencing one’s apology decision and
choice of strategies: the degree of violation; cultural, personal and contextual
elements; social parameters such as distance, power, and age. Their study,
however, focused more on individuals’ apologies rather than ones made by public
bodies. Meanwhile, Kampf (2009) introduced four groups of public apologies in
which responsibility is minimised in order to save the speaker’s face as much as
possible: compromising the apology’s performative verb, blurring the offense,
questioning the identity of the victim, and questioning the identity of the offender. He
also briefly mentioned four factors that lead to the offender’s adoption of public
apologies, including to withstand avoidance conflict, to earn politics of trust, to avoid
losing face, and to access freedom of future action (Kampf, 2009: 2269).
In contrast to apology, response to apology receives remarkably less attention
as the victim’s reaction has often been undermined (Kampf, 2008; Saleem et al,
2021). However, there exist a few noticeable theoretical frameworks that are
applicable to this study. Kampf (2008) investigated how the apology recipients
evaluate the apology and factors that might influence their reaction, including a
phenomenon he titled ‘embarrassment condition’ and the forgivers’ interest.
However, he did not specify any response strategy except for forgiveness and non-
rejection. In a study which collected participants’ apology responses in their second
language, Saleem et al. (2021) proposed a categorisation system that divides
collected responses into four main groups: acceptance, acknowledgement, evasion,
and rejection. Although their study was to investigate individuals’ responses, the
mentioned categories and their descriptions match with Vietnam’s responses that
have been collected for this essay.
 3

To analyse South Korea’s apology and influencing factors, this essay will apply
both frameworks of Kampf (2009) and Blum-Kulka and Olshtain (1984). For
Vietnam’s choice of apology response, the essay will apply Saleem et al. (2021)’s
strategy categorisation and Kampf (2008)’s proposals of influential factors.

Limitation
Considering the scope of the study, this essay will analyse only apologies and
apology responses offered by South Korea’s and Vietnam’s government, including
governmental bodies and representatives. As other statements from both sides’
individuals and organisations are excluded, the conclusion of this essay cannot be
generalised for all apologies and apology responses delivered by both countries.
Due to the sensitivity of the issue and the limitation of Internet technology at the
time the statement being delivered, the Vietnamese version of Tran Duc Luong’s
apology response in 2001 cannot be found. Therefore, its English translated version
will be analysed in replacement. Similarly, as none of Vietnamese news sources
directly quoted Tran Dai Quang’s exact response to Moon Jae In, only the
paraphrased summary of his responses will be analysed in the essay. However, this
might significantly impact the accuracy and credibility of categorising Vietnamese
responses.
In the attempt to recognise influential factors of both countries’ reactions,
multiple speculations have been raised based on historical contexts, political
relationship, and factual statistics between the two governments. Although the essay
makes sure to support all these speculations with proper evidence and tries its best
not to hastily jump to conclusions, it is necessary to emphasize that some
conclusions might not accurately reflect the governments’ true intentions behind their
choice of strategies.

Analysis of key findings

1. South Korea’s apology
1.1. Apology strategies
In 2001, the Republic of Korea (ROK)’s governmental representative publicly
addressed the South Korean troop’s involvement in the Vietnam War for the first
time. In the summit where Vietnam former president Tran Duc Luong visited South
Korea, the nation’s former president Kim Dae Jung expressed his condolences about
 4

the pain caused to Vietnamese people in the past (Kim, 2018). His exact statement

was: “불행한 전쟁에 참여해 본의 아니게 베트남에 고통을 준 데 미안하게 생각한다”

(I am sorry for unintentionally causing suffering to Vietnam by participating in the

unfortunate war) (Lee, 2018).
His statement was not an official apology, but it was reported as the very first
sincere attempt to apologise to Vietnam by Korean reporters (Kim, 2018; Lee, 2018).
Be that as it may, Kim’s statement applies three different strategies to minimise the
offender’s responsibility as proposed by Kampf (2009). They can be categorised into
two major groups: compromising the apology verb and adjusting the nature of the
offense.
First of all, Kim used an apologetic expression without responsibility.
Particularly, the phrase ‘unfortunate war’ showcases an example of ‘a non-
responsible expression of sorrow’ (Kampf, 2009: 2261), which is usually adopted to
avoid a straightforward apology or responsibility admission. Furthermore, the

expression ‘미안하게 생각하다’ did not exactly mean ‘I’m sorry’ like how it was

translated by Lee (2018). In fact, its literal meaning is ‘We think regretfully’1, which
should be categorised a non-performative apology (Kampf, 2009) rather than an

apology speech act like ‘I apologise’ or 미안하다/죄송하다 in Korean. Finally, Kim’s

use of the word ‘unintentionally’ also demonstrates his attempt to alleviate the
offense by associating the war and its consequences with an incident,
consequentially blurring the offender’s responsibility (Kampf, 2009: 2266).
In 2017, the second unofficial apology was delivered by South Korea former
president Moon Jae In. In a video aired at Gyeongju World Culture Expo 2017 in Ho
Chi Minh City, he said, ‘South Korea has a debt of heart to Vietnam’ regarding what

happened during the Vietnam War (Choi, 2017). In 2018, Moon repeated, ‘우리의

마음에 남아있는 양국간에 불행한 역사 1 대해 유감의 뜻을 표하며’ (We express my

regrets for the unfortunate history between the two countries that remain in our
hearts) (Arirang News, 2018). Both occasions shows that he continues expressing a

1
In Korean version, Kim did not use a subject (I/We) in the sentence. This is a common phenomenon in Korean
where the subject is omitted from the sentence when the context makes it obvious who the subject is. In this
case, as Kim was speaking in a governmental summit between the two countries, it should be understood that
he was speaking on behalf of his country rather than for himself.
 5

non-performative apology without responsibility by using the expressions ‘owing a

debt of heart’ and ‘express my regrets’ instead of delivering a standard apology’s
speech act.

1.2. Influential factors

This essay argues that South Korea’s choice of strategies has possibly been
influenced by three factors: the nation’s need to save face, the speaker’s guarantee
of access to future action, and the power distance between the two countries.
South Korea is one of the countries heavily affected by the Imperial Japanese
Army’s comfort women2 system (Ward & Lay, 2018). A lot of South Korean women
and female children were reported to be sold to Japanese army, forced to serve as
prostitutes and tortured horrendously. Such a crime has always maintained a
sensitive issue in the bilateral relationship between South Korea and Japan despite
the two countries’ strong economic partnership as well as geographical and cultural
closeness (Frayer, 2017). Despite receiving Japanese government’s personal and
official apologies as well as reparation schemes from generations of Japanese prime
ministers, South Korea constantly demands more serious remedial attempts
(Reynolds, 2020). The country is also known for drastic measures showing deep
contempt towards the Imperial Japanese army’s sexual crime, such as putting up a
statue of a Korean comfort woman in front of the Embassy of Japan in Seoul
(Adelstein & Kubo, 2015), or constantly bringing the issue up on global political
roundtables, resulting in the United States and the United Nations asking Japan to
issue an official apology (NPR, 2007; European Parliament, 2007). Paradoxically,
the Korean government, under the lead of the late president Park Chung Hee, had
caused a strikingly similar sexual crime to another country (Lee, 2013). Arguably,
blatantly admitting to such a crime would have been a tremendous loss to the
country’s face. Indeed, as Kampf (2009) argued, Kim’s decision to label the war an
‘incident’ reflects his avoidance of ‘extreme embarrassment’ for his side (Kampf,
2009: 2266). In other words, the risk of losing face leads the country’s leaders to go
for strategies that will avoid them difficult political situations but help them showcase
their politeness (Kampf, 2009).

2
The term describes women subjected to sexual slavery by Imperial Japanese Army before and during World
War II (The Asian Women Fund, 2014).
 6

Apart from the face-saving reason, the second apology offered by Moon might
have also been influenced by Moon’s will to guarantee his access to future actions.
Choi (2017) wrote that Moon was dissuaded from delivering an official apology to
Vietnam, even though he had had the intention to, by his aids and right-wing
politicians who well acknowledge their economic benefit from joining the Vietnam
War. Ku Su Jung, the senior director of the Korea – Vietnam Peace Foundation, also
mentioned that the apology was a controversial topic in South Korea (Kim, 2018).
Considering ROK’s political situation at the time, Moon was not in a favourable
condition to carry out his original intention. Moon became the president of the
Republic of Korea in 2017, after the corruption scandal that had sent his predecessor
Park Geun Hye to jail before her presidential term officially ended (McCurry, 2017).
As the newly elected president after such a severe national political crisis, he needed
to plan his actions wisely to strengthen his position and reliability within the
government and to Korean people. Understandably, when he visited Vietnam and
offered the unofficial apology in the same year, his presidential position and power
had not been strong enough for him to be granted the option of upsetting his aids,
right-wing politicians, and a considerable number of Korean scholars and public.
Arguably, Moon’s decision might have been his way to protect his future freedom of
actions, saving him from the risk of facing a backlash from his supporters and
reinforcing his presidential seat.
In addition, from the economists’ perspective that a country’s power can be
measured based on wealth (Beckley, 2018), there seems to exist a power distance
between a developing and a developed country, or in this case Vietnam and South
Korea. Indeed, there has been an investor-investee relationship between Vietnam
and South Korea. Among Asian countries, Vietnam ranks the third most invested
country of South Korea, constituting 9.4 percent of the latter’s OFDI between 1992
and 2014 (Oh & Mah, 2017). In 2021, despite negative economic impact of COVID-
19 leading to the decline in total direct investment into Vietnam, the country remains
ROK’s favourite investment destination as the amount of investment inflow from the
latter surged 43.6% compared to the previous year (Hai Yen, 2021). Vuong Dinh
Hue, Vietnam National Assembly President, also admitted the importance of South
Korea as an investor to Vietnam, ‘Economic cooperation has always been a highlight
and a key pillar in the two countries’ cooperation [...] The ROK is currently the largest
FDI investor in Vietnam [...] also Vietnam’s second largest ODA donor.’ (Kumar,
 7

2021). Considering this economic viewpoint, the more powerful – South Korea in this
case – might tend to devaluate the importance of offering a direct apology to the one
less powerful or Vietnam (Blum-Kulka and Olshtain, 1984).

2. Vietnam’s apology response

2.1. Apology response strategies
Responses from the Vietnam’s communist government to South Korea’s
attempts have been commented as mostly neglectful by Korean reporters (Kim,
2018; Choi, 2017).
In 2001, in response to Kim Dae Jung’s statement of condolence, the former
president Tran Duc Luong said:
Nevertheless, with the tradition of tolerance, humanity and peace and
friendship, Vietnam's policy in dealing with issues left behind by history is
to put aside the past, look forward to the future and cooperate for shared
development. We highly appreciate the fact that the ROK's Government,
mass organizations and individuals have carried out many activities aimed
at and made concrete contributions to helping Vietnam's reconstruction
and development efforts. (mofa.gof.vn, 2011)
Tran did not directly address Kim’s apology by either accepting the apology or
forgiving the Korean mercenary’s wrongdoings. Instead, he shifted the topic to the
multiple good traits of Vietnamese people and the priority of Vietnam’s policy at the
time. This can be recognised as a sub-category of evasion strategy in response to
the apology (Saleem, 2021). As the representative of Vietnam’s government, Tran
also demonstrated Vietnam’s acknowledgement of South Korea’s effort in helping
the country reconstruct and develop economically. This strategy is categorised as
acknowledgement, particularly accepting remedies from the other party by showing
appreciation to ROK’s effort and implicitly suggesting the continuity of such supports
(Saleem, 2021).
In 2017, Moon’s unofficial apology was greeted with silence from Vietnam.
There had been no official Vietnamese news sources reporting Moon’s apology on
the video record showcased at the Expo event (Choi, 2017; Kim, 2018). As the
Vietnamese press is under complete control of the communist government, it can be
construed that Vietnam’s government did not want to publicise the apology to
 8

Vietnamese people (BBC, 2018; Quackenbush et al., 2018). This can be categorised
as another attempt of evading the apology, particularly minimising the ROK’s attempt
to the public. When Moon repeated his words of regret in the summit in 2018, Tran
Dai Quang, the late Vietnam’s president, once again applied the evasion strategy, in
which he shifted focus from the issue to the future intensification of collaboration
between the two countries, encouraging more investment and advantageous
conditions for the development of Vietnam (Duy Tien & Cao Trung, 2018; TTXVN,
2018).

2.2. Influential factors

According to Kampf (2009), there are two major factors influencing one’s choice
of apology response strategies. One is titled ‘embarrassment condition’, which can
be explained that the motivation for the recipient to accept the apology or forgive is
highly dependent on how he or she perceive the level of embarrassment that the
apologiser has to suffer from (Kampf, 2009). In other words, if the recipient feels that
the situation is highly embarrassing and uncomfortable for the apologiser, he or she
would be more likely to forgive the latter. However, such likelihood can be immensely
affected by the second factor, the forgiver’s interest. If the forgiver’s intention is to
humiliate or trouble the apologiser, forgiveness or acceptance will not be given no
matter how sincere the apology is (Kampf, 2009). This essay argues that Vietnam’s
response to South Korea’s apology has been influenced by both aforementioned
factors, ordered by the level of importance: the interest of Vietnam’s government,
and the embarrassment condition.
It is necessary to address Vietnam’s government’s main interest, which has
been stated clearly in the responding statements of both former presidents of the
country. Both firmly declared the country’s will to grow from the past and head
towards the future, especially for the development purpose of the country. By no
means does this imply their neglect towards the painful past; instead, it rather
reflects Vietnam’s priority that is to receive direct investment, advantageous
conditions for exportation, financial support in developing the country, and to remain
a peace-loving neutral partner for all countries, including the Republic of Korea
(Kumar, 2021). Therefore, instead of rejecting or pushing for an official apology that
might intensify the offense, Vietnam’s government expressed its acknowledgement
towards South Korea government’s effort with an aim to achieve its priority for the
 9

better of the country. Indeed, this strategy seems to be working successfully based
on factual evidence: starting from Kim’s promise of financial support to Vietnam in
2001 (People’s Daily Online, 2001), Vietnam has constantly received a great inflow
of investment from South Korea despite times of financial crisis, including increasing
opportunities for Vietnamese labour force to live and work in South Korea (Kumar,
2021). The response, however, is far from giving an apology acceptance or a
statement of forgiveness. This arguably is a decision made to tie Korea to the
responsibility of making up to its wrongdoing, which equals the investment that
Vietnam needs for further development. By choosing a strategy that is in between
acceptance and rejection, Vietnam’s government has maximised its possibility of
achieving its economic priority for the country.
Moreover, as mentioned above, South Korea found itself in a paradoxical
position as it committed a crime similar to what it has been fighting against for the
last five decades. Pushing the issue and forcing its bilateral partner to utmost
embarrassment is likely to ruin the relation between two countries, hence backfiring
the priority of Vietnam’s government. The lesson can be learned from how South
Korea and Japan’s diplomatic relation has been rapidly deteriorating ever since the
former president Moon Jae In broke the ‘final and irreversible’ agreement between
Japan and his predecessor Park Geun Hye on the issue of comfort women (The
Economist, 2016; Yonhap News, 2018). Despite Moon’s hope of the issue not
causing a serious diplomatic dispute between both sides, two nations have been
reported to be engaging in a typical tit-for-tat dispute surrounding the war reparation
issue (BBC, 2019). In other words, if Vietnam had not considered the
embarrassment condition in favour of South Korea, it would have risked the
beneficial lateral relationship it has with the latter.

Discussion
By applying the theoretical frameworks of several scholars, the analysis has
found out apology strategies and apology responses as well as their influential
factors of both South Korea and Vietnam. As for The Republic of Korea, non-
performative apologising verbs and expressions to minimise the responsibility as well
as reference to the war and its consequence as an incident have been applied. The
analysis of context shows that there might be three factors influencing the nation
leaders’ choice strategies: the need to avoid of severe face loss, the president’s
 10

guarantee of access to freedom of future action, and the power distance between the
offender and the offended. As for the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, two major
response strategies to be applied are evasion and acknowledgement. There are two
factors found to have influenced these strategies: the priority of its government’s
interest, and its consideration of the other side’s embarrassment.
The findings have highlighted an outstanding case of apology giving – receiving
between two different nations. Public (non-)apology, as proposed by Kampf (2009),
has become remarkably familiar especially in the international playground. Offering a
public apology on behalf of the nation’s past wrong-doing is no more a strange case
among nations: Germany and Japan apologising for the second World War, the
United Kingdom apologising to Kenya, France apologising to Algeria, and Germany
also apologising to Namibia for colonisation, etc. With that being said, South Korea –
Vietnam situation arises as a striking contrast against another bilateral situation
involving South Korea, which is the sexual crime conflict caused by the Imperial
Japanese Army. While Japanese army’s crime bears a striking resemblance to that
of Korean mercenary during the Vietnam War, apologies offered by the two nations
substantially differs regarding the level of solemnity. Whereas Japan has offered
multiple official apologies as well as running reparation schemes to South Korea, the
latter has made only two unofficial apologetic statements towards Vietnam. ROK’s
and Vietnam’s respective reactions, however, are also sharply contradictory. In
particular, South Korea has constantly demonstrated its dissatisfaction towards
Japan’s apologies and kept demanding more serious attempts, while Vietnam’s
reaction to ROK’s effort has been remarkably mild and partially neglectful. This
observation has confirmed Kampf (2008)’s hypothesis that the sincerity of an
apology or the severity of an offense might not be absolutely decisive to the choice
of strategies, whether to apologise or to respond to an apology. Furthermore, the
findings also support Nisa and Sustrisno (2018)’s conclusion, based on their analysis
of apologies given by characters in Harry Potter movie series, that the relationship
between the offender and the offended significantly influences which strategies
would be used. This can be an implication for further study into the impact of bilateral
relations on the delivery of public apology, encouraging more in-depth research on
the comparison and contrast between public apology and individual apology.
As mentioned in the literature review, apology response has not been receiving
enough attention from scholars due to the neglect of the apology recipients. While
 11

the concept of public (non)-apology has been long introduced, research on apology
response has mostly focused on individual participants rather than public figures,
including national governments (An, Su & Xiang, 2021; Alasqah, 2021; Saleem et al.,
2021). The response of nations to apologies, for their equivalent importance in
comparison with nations’ apologies, urgently needs further academic study and
recognition in the field of intercultural communication. The analysis of Vietnam’s
apology response involved in this study can provide a perspective of how
complicated a governmental response to an apology in the international context
might become, which calls for a systematic theoretical framework based on which
such responses can be categorised and adequately explained.
In conclusion, the study is not without its limitations. Nevertheless, the study
has attempted to showcase how apology theories can be applied to analysing public
apologies and responses, suggesting further related research into influential factors
and possible impacts or consequences of public apology and response. It has also
highlighted the significance of apology or response strategies in maintaining peace
and guaranteeing governmental interests in international relations, as reflected in
South Korea – Vietnam’s strong bilateral relation despite the unfortunate past.
 12

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