Asian perspective

The severe deterioration in South Korea-Japan relations under Abe Shinzo and Park Geun-hye seems paradoxical given that Abe's grandfather, Kishi Nobusuke, and Park's father, Park Chung-hee, were   who helped forge Japan-South  normalization in 1965. However, Abe and Park are better understood as operating within  nationalist conservative logic that brought their families together but now drives their countries apart. KEYWORDS: Korea-Japan relations, Kishi Nobusuke, Abe Shinzo, Park Chung-hee, Park Geun-hye, Manchukuo, Korea-Japan normalization, conservative nationalism.WHEN PRIME MINISTER ABE SHINZO VISITED WASHINGTON AFTER returning to power in 2013, he was asked to reflect on  frayed state of Japan's relations with Seoul.  met President-elect Park Geun-hye twice before, and had a meal with her actually, he answered. And then, her father President Park Chung-hee was close friends with my grandfather. President Park Chung-hee was pro-Japan. . . . Although we do have  Takeshima issue [the territorial dispute over islands known to Koreans as Dokdo], I would like to try to work to resolve these issues and have a good relationship with Korea (Abe 2013). Abe's maternal grandfather Kishi Nobusuke and Park's father were indeed close political allies. Abe assumed, as did many onlookers, that this deep family bond would help bring Tokyo and Seoul closer.Yet quite  opposite occurred in  first two years after Abe and Park took power in early 2013. Indeed,  two leaders refused to set foot in  other's country, and only met when it was virtually impossible not to-on  sidelines of  2014 Nuclear Security Summit, for example, when US president Barack Obama leaned hard on both allies to sit side by side (they sat with him in between). South Korea-Japan relations went into a kind of deep freeze, one of  worst periods since normalization in 1965. Abe seemed to South Koreans to be going out of his way to antagonize them: undercutting  validity of  Kono and Murayama statements of apology for wartime sexual slavery- even as  number of ...

The Kishi Effect: A Political Genealogy of Japan-ROK Relations