Instability in energy markets and supply chains tied to the war in the Middle East provided the backdrop Tuesday as South Korean President Lee Jae Myung and Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi convened for the fourth time in roughly six months, according to The Associated Press.
Tuesday's gathering took place in Andong, a city in southeastern South Korea where Lee was raised, its centuries-old folk village designated as a UNESCO World Heritage site. The reciprocal hometown format was a first for sitting leaders of the two nations — their January meeting had unfolded in Nara, the ancient Japanese city that Takaichi calls home.
"The fact that such meaningful and historic exchanges took place in the span of just four months speaks to the depth and strength of the friendship and bonds that Korea and Japan now share," Lee said at a joint news conference following the summit, according to the AP.
On the Japanese side, Takaichi said talks covered efforts to secure energy and critical mineral supplies, including potential swap agreements for crude oil, refined petroleum products, and natural gas. Both leaders also addressed the importance of trilateral cooperation among Seoul, Tokyo, and Washington.
Choi Eunmi, a Japan expert at the Seoul-based Asan Institute for Policy Studies, said the two countries have shifted their focus toward cooperation rather than disputes. "They would now think negative bilateral relations won't be helpful to anyone," Choi told the AP.
Analysts point to a more fraught external environment than the one previous leaders navigated — among the pressures bearing down on Lee and Takaichi are the economic fallout from the Iran war and a U.S. administration defined by its America-first posture. Both nations have committed hundreds of billions of dollars to American business ventures, yet Washington's escalating tariffs and its increasingly transactional handling of security commitments have unsettled public confidence in the alliance on both sides of the Korea Strait, according to the AP.
Experts warn, however, that the warmer tone masks unaddressed fault lines — chief among them the legacy of Japan's wartime mobilization of Koreans as forced laborers and sex slaves, disputes that analysts say have quieted mainly because both governments have opted to sidestep them rather than resolve them. "Both are not talking about how to settle these disputes or prevent them from recurring and we don't know when such conflicts may arise," Choi said.
Both countries anchor Washington's alliance network in Asia, but decades of friction rooted in Japan's 35-year occupation of the Korean Peninsula clouded their bilateral relationship long after World War II ended. A thaw set in during 2023, when the leaders who preceded Lee and Takaichi moved to shelve historical quarrels in the face of shared challenges — among them a growing North Korean nuclear threat and intensifying rivalry between the United States and China.