The foreign ministers of South Korea and Japan on Monday achieved an agreement meant to resolve a decades-long impasse over Korean women forced into Japanese military-run brothels during World War II. [...] The deal, which included an apology from Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and an $8.3 million aid fund from Tokyo for the elderly former sex slaves, could reverse decades of animosity and mistrust between the thriving democracies, trade partners and staunch U.S. allies.

Members of the Senior Public Diplomacy Group headed by Choi Ha-kyung welcomed guests and speakers to the Annual Korean Culture & Heritage Dinner Party at Ibis Myeongdong Ambassador Hotel in Seoul on Thursday night.

The track is meant to "ignite people's hearts with the soft power of music", according to the non-profit Friendship Ambassadors Foundation, which produced the CD. It's being released to coincide with the 70th anniversary of the UN. Appropriately, the musical diplomats have also recorded a cover of Rockin' All Over the World.

When it comes to public diplomacy, China might be better off loosening up and developing a sense of humor about itself. Gone are the days of Hu Jintao’s “smile diplomacy,” which aimed to convince the world that it had nothing to fear from a rising China. 

Recent developments at home and abroad suggest that Japan’s foreign policy is at a major turning point. Concrete steps are being taken to deepen the bilateral security alliance with the United States, and yet there is no national consensus on what should be done about the overconcentration of US bases in Okinawa. [...] The thrust of public diplomacy in the postwar years was to project an image of Japan that was not militarist. 

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.