Alterations of the Past and Future : History, Interests, and Politics in the Contemporary Korea Japan Relations

초록

In this work, I attempt to draw a broad picture of Korea-Japan relations over the last 5 decades on the basis of inductive reasoning. By reviewing the history of their bilateral interactions since the normalization of diplomatic relationship in terms of cooperation and conflict, I sort out three cases of qualitatively advanced cooperation and four cases of serious diplomatic confrontations. By analyzing these cases of cooperation and conflict, I detect the common variablesthat affected most the aspects and results. Based on such empirical analyses, I put forth three arguments. The first is that the essential formula of cooperation and conflict in Korea-Japan relations can be articulated as the interactions between economic incentives as the cooperative factor and historical perception gaps as the cause of provocation. The second argument is that the economic motivations and history issues are affected, in turn, by variables such as international political system, economic developments and domestic political changes in each country.The third argument is that from the 1990s on, the factors that affect the basic formula of Korea-Japan relations have changed in ways that decrease the economic incentives while increasing the saliency of history issues.

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