ABSTRACT
A divided Korea and a South Korea isolated until the end of the 1980s from its mainland neighbors opened the door to Japan to revive its Korean diplomacy and make plans to turn this peninsula into an entryway for regional leverage and cooperation. Until the final days of the cold war, the lone option was to forge closer ties with the South in preparation for a time when barriers would fall. Japan did not win the confidence of the South Korean people, however, and the path to regionalism looked long and winding. In the 1990s, new options at last could be contemplated: (1) Japan and South Korea together could lead in liberalizing economic ties with the nearby three states emerging from the traditional socialist model, finding common cause in their capitalist and democratic systems; (2) Japan could give priority to ties with China or Russia and press South Korea to avoid being left behind; and (3) Japan could directly approach North Korea and look for a breakthrough, which would support South Korea’s effort at reconciliation with the North. Examples of all three of these approaches can be found over the fifteen years since the cold war ended. In 2004, negotiations for a free trade agreement (FTA) with South Korea were the latest sign of the first approach. Despite efforts in the first half of the 1990s to form a bridge with China and to create an economic zone around the Sea of Japan that would draw the Russian Far East closer, prospects of bypassing the Koreas had faded by 2004. The third approach to appeal directly to North Korea last drew attention in September 2002 when Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi visited Pyongyang, and even in the ensuing dark days when the North epitomized all that the Japanese despised there were still rumblings of a turnabout through six-party talks in Beijing that could lead the way to regionalism.
