Seventy years after Korea’s liberation from Japan’s colonial rule, the two countries are often described as “distant neighbors,” an expression underscoring the psychological distance that remains unbridgeable due to their historical and territorial feuds.

Growing nationalism in both countries has further heightened the tension between the two neighbors, limiting the possibilities of enhanced bilateral cooperation, particularly in the security realm in the face of their shared threat of a nuclearizing North Korea.

In terms of cooperation in the social, cultural and economic domains, they have made great strides. However, these achievements have been eclipsed by unrelenting squabbles caused by Japan’s ambivalence over its colonial-era atrocities and repeated claims to Dokdo, a set of East Sea islets under Korea’s control.

Experts say that both nations should exert more efforts to prevent history issues from further damaging their ties, expand areas of cooperation and pursue a future-oriented partnership that would ultimately contribute to regional peace and prosperity.

“Seoul and Tokyo should strive harder to build mutual trust and expand their cooperation in the economic and security domains, particularly when North Korea poses a grave threat and the security landscape is now undergoing a shift triggered by the rise of China,” said Park Young-june, political science professor at Korea National Defense University.

Before South Korea and Japan signed a treaty in 1965 to normalize their diplomatic ties, the two countries had few political, cultural and economic exchanges.

After World War II, the U.S. envisioned a pacifist, demilitarized Japan. But it retracted the plan and made the archipelago nation a key ally to fend off communist expansion, and the process of holding Japan thoroughly responsible for its wartime aggression foundered.

For South Koreans haunted by the traumatic memories of Japan’s 36-year occupation of the peninsula, it was unthinkable to have any relations with its onetime colonizer.

The first glimmer of hope for positive relations appeared as the Korean War gave a substantial role for Japan to play: The U.S. used Japan as its military’s staging base to provide logistical support to its forces fighting on the peninsula.

But relations between Korea and Japan were still frosty, and their grievances were further aggravated by a set of issues including a fishery conflict in the East Sea.

Until the two sides reached a fishery agreement in 1965, which was replaced by a new one in 1999, South Korean authorities had seized hundreds of Japanese fishing boats that violated the so-called Peace Line, a “maritime sovereignty line” demarcated in 1952 by the Syngman Rhee government.

Japan’s 1959 decision to send a large number of Korean residents in Japan to North Korea, including many from the South, also infuriated South Koreans.

With the North struggling to address its labor shortage and Japan seeking to deport Koreans, the two sides pushed ahead with the “repatriation” project despite strong objections from the South that argued that the decision to send even South Koreans to the North disregarded its sovereignty and international humanitarian principles.

With Washington’s push to bring its allies of South Korea and Japan together in a Cold War-era campaign against the former Soviet Union, the two sides eventually reached a landmark deal to normalize their relations on June 22, 1965 – but only after nearly 14 years of grueling negotiations.

The negotiations, which began in October 1951, were an extremely tough process, as the two sides viewed Japan’s colonization of Korea differently: Korea still sees it as illegal while Japan argues it was the “legitimate” occupation under a formal annexation treaty.

Under the 1965 normalization treaty, Tokyo pledged to offer to Seoul $300 million in free grants, $200 million in long-term loans and $300 million in commercial loans. The financial assistance was offered not in the form of reparations for damages from Japan’s colonization of the peninsula, but mainly “economic cooperation.”

The deal, thus, did not include any apology from Japan for the occupation of the peninsula. Critics have called the deal “unfinished,” although they recognize it was an “inevitable compromise” for a poor Korea whose per capita annual gross domestic product was merely worth around $100 by today’s dollar values.

The negotiations also prompted vehement protests nationwide here among students, opposition forces and intellectuals, which led to the administration declaring a state of emergency in June 1964.

With the military-backed regime in Seoul focusing on economic development and the U.S. pressuring its allies to cooperate during the Cold War, historical conflicts seemed to have been defused to an extent.

But after the Cold War ended in 1991, historical issues were brought to the fore as Japan sought a greater security role and South Korea’s civil society increased its voices to demand Japan’s sincere contrition for the country’s colonial atrocities.

“Under the authoritarian governments in Korea, people’s voices were tamped down in a sense and were not reflected in policymaking. But with the country democratized and civil society rising, calls for postwar compensation and apologies increased,” said Lee Won-deog, an international politics professor at Kookmin University.

Under the so-called Yoshida doctrine, a postwar national strategy centering on economic development based on security backing from the U.S., Japan had long refrained from taking any military role beyond the country.

But as the international community called for Japan’s greater security contributions since the 1990s, Tokyo has sought to explore a new national identity. With Japanese right-wingers reviving the memories of its past militarism, Tokyo’s moves toward a “normal state” have, nonetheless, triggered strong resistance from Korea.

Japanese politicians’ visits to the Yasukuni Shrine honoring Japanese war dead, Tokyo’s refusal to sincerely address its wartime atrocities, including forced labor and sexual slavery, its claim to Dokdo and distortion of history in textbooks have continued to strain bilateral ties.

For the past several years, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s seemingly revisionist view of history and his pursuit of the hawkish security agenda including collective self-defense have further damaged bilateral ties.

But not all the reconciliatory efforts have gone down the drain.

In 1998, Japanese then-Prime Minister Keizo Obuchi expressed “deep remorse and a heartfelt apology” to Korea for Japan’s colonial rule in a joint statement issued at the close of his summit with Korea’s then-President Kim Dae-jung.

Seoul also secured the 1993 Kono Statement and 1995 Murayama Statement that expressed Tokyo’s apology for its wartime sexual enslavement of Korean women, euphemistically called “comfort women,” and its colonization, respectively.

Above all, the thorniest historical issue is the comfort women issue. Seoul has argued that the “wartime humanitarian” issue is urgent as only 47 known victims are still alive. Tokyo claims the issue was already settled under the normalization pact.

By Song Sang-ho (sshluck@heraldcorp.com)