When the United States endeavored to build a new world order in the Pacific after World War II it did so assuming a close, cooperative rapport between American allies South Korea and Japan. What American policy makers discovered was an often fraught and fractious relationship between those two nations. In a new article for Origins: Current Events in Historical Perspective, Tufts University professor Sung-Yoon Lee sketches the history of tensions between South Korea and Japan and examines why it has been so difficult for those two countries to collaborate on issues of shared importance.

Read the full article here.

Origins: Current Events in Historical Perspective is published by the History Departments at The Ohio State University and Miami University. This article is supported by a U.S. Department of Education Title VI grant to The Ohio State University's East Asian Studies Center.