"Are Japan and South Korea Poised for a Historic Breakthrough?" - by CWP Ayumi Teraoka

When the leaders of China, Japan, and South Korea last met, in May 2024, observers viewed the meeting with a sense of relief. Japan and South Korea were emerging from one of the darkest periods in their bilateral relationship, when tensions over Japan’s colonial legacy in Korea had become so intense that they derailed traditional areas of cooperation in security and trade. In 2018, leaders in Tokyo reported that a South Korean warship had locked its radar on a Japanese patrol plane, and in 2019 the two countries launched a tit-for-tat escalation, in which Tokyo tightened export controls and Seoul responded by threatening to stop sharing intelligence. The substantive but fragile rapprochement between the two U.S. allies starting in 2022 allowed them to engage a powerful and assertive Beijing in a two-against-one dynamic.

Are Japan and South Korea Poised for a Historic Breakthrough? An Unlikely Partnership Could Allow Tokyo and Seoul to Counter China Ayumi Teraoka December 19, 2025

Ayumi Teraoka is Assistant Professor of Politics at Brandeis University. She studies alliance politics and security issues in the Indo-Pacific. Her forthcoming book examines the history of U.S. alliance management in Asia from the 1960s to the present, illuminating the conditions under which the United States successfully negotiated geopolitically contested issues with allies, including air defense integration and the defense of Taiwan, in the face of China's opposition. Her research has been supported by the Smith Richardson Foundation, the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, and the America in the World Consortium, among others. Before joining Brandeis, she held postdoctoral fellowships at the University of Texas at Austin (2022-2023) and Columbia University (2023-2025), where she taught Japanese Foreign Policy for Columbia's School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA). She also previously held research positions at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington, D.C. She holds a Ph.D. and an M.A. in Security Studies from Princeton University, an M.A. in Asian Studies from Georgetown University, and a B.A. in Law from Keio University.

Photo Credit: https://www.foreignaffairs.com/japan/are-japan-and-south-korea-poised-historic-breakthrough

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