This paper examines Korea-Japan relations around the time of President Chun Doo Hwan’s official visit to Japan, which was realized in September 1984, about 20 years after the two countries established diplomatic relations, based on Korean diplomatic...
This paper examines Korea-Japan relations around the time of President Chun Doo Hwan’s official visit to Japan, which was realized in September 1984, about 20 years after the two countries established diplomatic relations, based on Korean diplomatic documents. In the diplomatic negotiations between Korea and Japan over the agenda to be addressed at the summit or the joint statement to be announced as a result, the areas of interest and meaning given to both sides were different.
On the economic front, Korea requested Japan to expand the Generalized System of Preferences(GSP), ease non-tariff barriers, dispatch an import promotion team to Korea, and transfer industrial technology to resolve the imbalance in trade with Japan, but Japan responded passively. There seemed to be little awareness that historical issues could have a negative impact on building a future-oriented relationship between the two countries. In particular, the legal status and treatment of the Korean residents in Japan, and the issues of confirming the legal status of third-generation Korean residents in Japan and younger and the abolition of fingerprinting for Koreans in Japan were only resolved in the early 1990s.
President Chun Doo Hwan’s visit to Japan can be said to be the starting point for a new Korea-Japan relationship in that it improved the Japanese people’s image of South Korea and served as an opportunity to broaden the interest and exchanges between the two people of both countries toward each other. However, there were many challenges to overcome.