The Yomiuri Shimbun asked Kwansei Gakuin University Prof. Shunji Hiraiwa, an observer of contemporary Korean affairs, for his perspective on the significance of the meeting and how the issue of the so-called comfort women and other issues should be approached in the future.

Sino-ROK normalization has brought enormous economic and trade benefits to both countries, but over two decades of ever-closer “partnership” between Beijing and Seoul, South Korea has never gained the level of strategic support from Beijing that it has desired as leverage in dealing with North Korea. 

Two years after his election, President Hassan Rouhani of Iran is about to go down in history as a leader who defused an intense and bitter conflict that could have led to a military attack on Iran. A nuclear deal that the majority of Iranians hope will bring an end to the isolation of Iran, much needed relief from international sanctions, and a new chapter in U.S.-Iran relations is now in sight. If other enemy countries have faced each other on the battlefield and ultimately managed to work out their differences, why is it impossible for Iran and the United States to do the latter?

Policymakers in the United States, China, and other Asian powers must choose whether to deal forthrightly and sensibly with the changing regional power distribution or avoid the hard decisions that China’s rise poses until the situation grows ever more polarized and dangerous.

Despite repeated attempts by reporters to bait him into dredging up lingering resentments against Japan, a senior South Korean diplomat bit his tongue, downplaying 70-year-old tensions at a trilateral meeting in Washington. “Diplomacy is about trying to find a way to work together while we have healthy differences on issues,” South Korea’s Vice Foreign Minister Cho Tae-yong told reporters at the State Department on Thursday.

The first large-scale event organized by the Carmel Institute, the symposium reminded its guests about the profound cooperation between the U.S. and the Soviet Union during WWII and stressed the importance of the role such unity could play in the future, as well as how this might be achieved given the current political situation.

A push by Japan to correct perceived bias in accounts of the country's wartime past is creating a row that risks muddling the positive message in a mammoth public relations campaign to win friends abroad.