Memory Politics and International Relations in East Asia: Focusing on "Past Problem" between South Korea and Japan

In the globalizing society, it is inevitable to have good relations with neighboring countries. After WW II, global areas have been formed differently by America. In other words, America had set multilateralism system in Europe, in contrast to bilateralism system in East Asia. So, East Asian countries couldn't communicate and exchange without America for a long time. However, in the Post-Cold War, though this mood was dissolved, it is still difficult to say East Asian countries have good relationship one another. In this paper, I argue that the reason is unsolved problems, the emotional matters among the nations. Unlike Europe, it occurred past problems in East Asia repeatedly and continuously. Then, it makes hard to cooperate the nations. On the basis of Constructivism perspective, this paper takes an example, Korea-Japan relations, which has some unsolved past problems. In Korea-Japan relations, there are many tries and efforts to have a good relation politically and socially. Yet, it comes to nothing whenever past problems happened between two nations. In the political part, we can find it by examining the change of policies toward the nation before and after occurring past problems. Likewise, in the social part, as one of evidences, the change rate of number of tourists coming and going to the countries proves it. Irrational factors can affect relations between nations.memory politics; collective memory; international relations; Korea-Japan relations; past problem