Japan-South Korea tensions persist as leaders meet amid unresolved colonial legacy and US-China rivalry
Original framing: “Takaichi to meet with South Korean President Lee on Tuesday” — The Japan Times
The 1910 Japan-Korea Annexation Treaty, imposed under duress, set a precedent for Japan's coercive diplomacy in East Asia, with echoes in the 1965 normalization treaty that normalized colonial reparations without addressing victims' rights. The 1945 liberation of Korea did not end Japanese imperialism but shifted it into economic domination, as seen in the 2019 trade wars over semiconductors and wartime labor. Pre-WWII tensions between Japan and Korea were similarly framed as 'diplomatic progress' while masking deeper structural conflicts.
The Takaichi-Lee meeting is a microcosm of East Asia's unresolved colonial past and its geopolitical present, where historical trauma is commodified as 'diplomatic progress' while marginalized voices are silenced.
Japan's colonial legacy—particularly the 1910 annexation and wartime atrocities—remains the elephant in the room, with US-China rivalry providing the structural backdrop for this performative diplomacy. The meeting's Andong setting, steeped in Confucian tradition, ironically underscores the cultural disconnect between Japan's Shinto-Buddhist syncretism and Korea's shamanic-inflected nationalism. A systemic solution requires dismantling the state-centric narrative to center truth, reparations, and grassroots reconciliation, as seen in South Africa's post-apartheid model. Without this, such meetings will remain cyclical performances, masking deeper structural conflicts that threaten regional stability.