Jeju Peace Institute

JIN Chang Soo(Head of Japanese Research Center, The Sejong Institute)

The deterioration in Korea-Japan relations is having a negative effect on Northeast Asia’s regional order, economic relations and private sector exchanges. Both Korea and Japan remain hesitant about coming forward and taking the initiative to improve their bilateral relations and have wasted no opportunity to criticize each other on various occasions. Many have begun to argue that both Korea and Japan need to make some difficult political decisions to improve their bilateral relations and expand their national interests instead of allowing themselves to be swept away by populism. To that end, they claim, Prime Minister Abe must change his historical perspective while President Park must be more accommodating to the idea of the Korea-Japan summit.

It is time for Korea and Japan to send out a message to each other indicating their willingness to improve their bilateral relations. If they fail to the momentum needed to ameliorate their bilateral relations within 2014, the possibility of improving their relations will become far more distant. Therefore, Korea, for its part, needs to demonstrate its commitment to improving its relations with Japan and take specific actions in that regard so that Japan and the international community can anticipate the Korea-Japan summit. Korea needs to hold the Korea-Japan summit on the occasion of multilateral conferences like the APEC in preparation for the 50th anniversary of the normalization of diplomatic relations between Korea and Japan in 2015.