“日本已失去对韩国信任”：日韩关系陷入至暗时刻？

日本7月4日起开始对韩国半导体材料进行出口限制，此举严重影响韩国智能手机、芯片等高科技支柱产业，三星、SK、LG等韩国电信巨头公司都将会受到巨大冲击。韩方普遍认为，日本采取制裁措施，是对韩国”强征劳工案”裁决的报复。双方的冲突和整个事态都在持续恶化。日韩到底是什么时候“结下的梁子”？最新的冲突会给两国带来怎么样的影响？

Export Controls in Asia

Take just about any trade fight today, and President Donald Trump's America is at the centre of it. But a brawl now under way in Asia, between Japan and South Korea, has the potential to be as damaging as much of what Mr Trump has stirred up.
提到如今几乎任何一场贸易纠纷，唐纳德·特朗普（领导下）的美国都处于中心位置。但是在亚洲，日本和韩国之间的一场纠纷正在进行之中，这有可能和特朗普挑起的大多数贸易争端具有同等的破坏性。

Tensions between Japan and South Korea go back centuries. Japan's colonisation of Korea between 1910 and 1945 is still resented. Japan believes a 1965 agreement resolved claims by South Korea over forced labour. It is incensed that South Korea's supreme court last year ordered Japanese firms to compensate victims. Amid a widening rift, Japan took its most serious action on July 4th when it began restricting exports to South Korea of three specialised chemicals used to make semiconductors and samrtphones.
日韩之间的矛盾可以追溯到几个世纪前。1910年至1945年间，日本对韩国进行殖民统治，韩国依旧对此怀恨在心。日本认为1965年达成的协议解决了对韩国（强征）劳动力的索赔。去年，韩国最高法院要求日本公司赔偿（二战被征用的）受害者，引发了日本的勃然大怒。在日益扩大的分歧中，日本于7月4日采取史上最严厉行动，开始限制向韩国出口三项专门用于制造半导体和智能手机的化工材料。

The stakes are high. Japan accounts for as much as 90% of global production of these chemicals. They are needed to make memory chips, which are essential to all sorts of electronic devices. And South Korean firms are the world's dominant manufacturers of memory chips. If Japan were to choke off exports, the pain would ripple through global tech supply chains.
该举风险很高。在这些化工材料全球产量上，日本占比高达90%，这些材料被用于制造存储芯片，而存储芯片对各种电子设备都说必不可少的。韩国公司是世界上内存芯片的最大制造商，如果日本切断了这些材料的出口，韩国芯片断供之痛将波及全球科技供应链。

It is not too late to defuse the situation. The two countries will discuss their disagreement at the World Trade Organisation later this month. This is shaping up to be a test of whether the global trading system can, despite great strains, still soothe tensions-or whether it is being supplanted by a new, meaner order, in which supply chains are weaponised and commerce is purely an extension of politics.
现在缓和局势还为时不晚。日韩将于本月晚些时候在世界贸易组织讨论两国分歧。届时，这将是对全球贸易体系的一次考验，看它是否在两国剑拔弩张的紧张情况下，仍能缓和矛盾，或者它是否正被一种更为苛刻的新秩序所取代。在这种新秩序下，供应链被当作武器，而贸易彻头彻尾成了政治的延伸。