Last week, Shinzo Abe and Park Geun-hye, leaders of Japan and South Korea respectively, met in a trilateral meeting arranged by the US on the fringes of the nuclear security summit at The Hague. That this should have caused any surprise is shocking. How can the prime minister of Japan and president of neighbouring South Korea, both more than one year into office, not have met each other before? So poisonous has the atmosphere in northeast Asia become, laced as it is with historical acrimony and unresolved territorial disputes, that the leaders of Washington’s two most important allies in the region are barely on speaking terms.
Appearances at the meeting were instructive. President Barack Obama sat between the two as if to keep them from each other’s throats. Nothing controversial was discussed. The three talked about the one issue that more or less unites them – their abhorrence of a nuclear North Korea. This ensured the meeting achieved little substantive, other than the symbolism of it actually taking place.
How has it come to this? It is entirely regrettable that relations between two of the most important economies in Asia should have deteriorated so far. If two democracies, with the supposed checks and balances of a free press and independent institutions, can be at daggers drawn, what hope for Japan’s relationship with China, where the Communist party has its own reasons for keeping the flames of nationalism and hatred alive?