(EDITORIAL from the Korea Herald on Jan. 14)

A fresh start

Prior to the summit talks in Seoul between President Lee Myung-bak and Japanese
Prime Minister Taro Aso, a Tokyo government spokesman said its seabed exploration
project in the East Sea did not include areas around Dokdo, contrary to Japanese
press reports. The clarification certainly helped the atmosphere of the dialogue
between the two leaders, which produced wide-ranging agreements on bilateral
issues.
Their agreements revolved around reconfirming a "future-oriented, mature
partnership" between the two neighbors, a diplomatic term first coined by Lee and
Aso's predecessor Yasuo Fukuda, when Lee visited Tokyo in April last year. This
mature partnership required Tokyo officials to take the trouble of specifying -
or deliberately reducing - the scope of the seabed project in an effort to
prevent a fresh controversy from spoiling the mood of the summit.
Aso told a joint press conference with Lee following their one-hour meeting at
Cheong Wa Dae Monday that mature partnership as he understood it depended on the
willingness of two countries' leaders to "meet and make phone calls whenever they
wanted, without any particular issues." This time, however, the summit had a
heavy agenda dominated by the pressing task of increasing cooperation to weather
the global economic crisis.
The Japanese prime minister was accompanied by a group of leading businessmen on
his visit to Seoul. The unprecedented arrangement indicated enthusiasm on Aso's
part to change the pattern of bilateral ties and the relations between Korea,
China and Japan. Japan hosted a summit with the leaders of the Korea and China in
Fukuoka last month.
During the Seoul dialogue, Aso expressed his wish that the heads of government of
the three Northeast Asian nations make more regular contact to discuss regional
and global issues like Britain, France and Germany have. There can be no reason
for Seoul and Beijing to have any objection to emulating the diplomatic openness
and spontaneity of the three leading players in Western Europe, which have
demonstrated a mature partnership even without declaring it.
Thanks to a series of multilateral summit talks in recent months, Lee and Aso
have met as many as five times. As they reported the outcome of their discussions
on a variety of issues including financial and industrial cooperation, North
Korean denuclearization and joint efforts for the reconstruction of Afghanistan,
Lee and Aso revealed their common desire for a fresh start in relations between
their two countries, starting by building a warm personal relationship.
The need for "shuttle diplomacy" has often been stressed by Korean and Japanese
officials but sporadic eruptions of historical and territorial disputes have
caused long intervals. A new round of top-level diplomacy in frequent mutual
visits is about to start between the conservative leaders of the two nations, but
people across the Korea Strait wonder how soon an interruption would come over
any of the many potential troubles between them.
The world is now in an economic crisis. This extraordinary situation requires
Korea and Japan to be truly "future-oriented" not in word but in deed. This will
allow them to seek real cooperation to resolve bilateral economic problems and
work together to help stave off the global crisis. Here, we are seeing an
opportunity for the two neighbors to forge lasting cooperative ties, but what is
still imperative is extreme caution to avoid reopening old wounds.
(END)