Eighty-one years after liberation, South Korea and Japan have learned how to work together without having settled how to remember the past.
That may be the most revealing measure of their relationship today.
For Koreans, Aug. 15 marks liberation from 35 years of Japanese colonial rule from 1910 to 1945. For Japan, the same date marks the end of World War II — a day to mourn the dead, reflect on the destruction of war and reaffirm the country's postwar commitment to peace.
The histories overlap. The memories do not.
Leaders of Seoul and Tokyo this day both spoke of the future. Both showed a degree of restraint. Both also revealed, through carefully chosen words and conspicuous omissions, how differently they believe the past should accompany them into that future.
North Korea and Russia spent the same anniversary invoking the struggle against Imperial Japan not as difficult history to be managed, but as a source of legitimacy for their rapidly deepening relationship.
The contrast says much about the new strategic landscape of Northeast Asia.
South Korean President Lee Jae Myung devoted significant attention to cooperation with Japan in his Liberation Day address. He noted that the two governments had pursued active shuttle diplomacy over the past year and “laid the foundation for trust,” while expanding cooperation in supply chains, energy and advanced industries.
But Lee did not present better relations as evidence that history had been settled.
“For the achievements made so far to continue without disruption, there must, above all, be steadfast trust between the peoples of our two countries,” he said, while acknowledging victims and bereaved families who continue to live with the wounds of the colonial period.
Lee did not say historical disputes must first be resolved before Seoul can cooperate with Tokyo. Nor did he suggest that strategic and economic necessity should consign those disputes to the past.
His message was more pragmatic - cooperate now, but recognize that the durability of that cooperation ultimately rests on trust and that history remains one of the tests of that trust. Lee was effectively arguing that the two must be attempted simultaneously.
Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi approached Aug. 15 from a markedly different direction.
At Japan's National Memorial Service for the War Dead, she emphasized the country that emerged after 1945. Japan, she said, had “consistently pursued peace in the postwar period” and contributed to global prosperity.
“Japan can play an important role in resolving various issues confronting nations,” she said, adding that the country could become “a shining beacon in the Indo-Pacific that others could rely on.” She also pledged that Japan would never repeat the ravages of war.
The undertone was clear but should not be overstated.
Takaichi did not repudiate Japan's previous positions on its wartime past. Her address stopped short of an explicit break with the broader historical positions taken by previous governments.
But she shifted the emphasis.
Rather than dwell on what Imperial Japan had done before 1945, her language centered on what postwar Japan had become: peaceful, prosperous and increasingly prepared to play a larger role in the Indo-Pacific.
The most telling word was one she did not use. Takaichi omitted hansei, or remorse.
Her predecessor, Shigeru Ishiba, had restored the word to the annual address last year after an absence of 13 years, saying Japan must “take deeply into our hearts once again our remorse and the lessons learned from that war.”
Takaichi retained the lesson — never repeat the ravages of war — but not the explicit expression of remorse.
Emperor Naruhito, speaking at the same memorial ceremony, continued to use substantially stronger language about history.
“While reflecting on the long years of peace since the war and looking back on the past with deep remorse, I earnestly hope that the scourges of war will never be repeated,” the emperor said. He has retained the language of “deep remorse” in his annual memorial remarks since ascending to the throne in 2019.
Japan does not possess a single view of its wartime past, just as South Korea does not speak with one voice about how far historical grievances should determine relations with Tokyo.
The more meaningful question is which interpretation political leaders choose to emphasize.
On this Aug. 15, Lee placed the victims, their continuing wounds and the need for trust inside his argument for future cooperation. Takaichi acknowledged the tragedy of war but placed greater emphasis on Japan's postwar achievements and future regional role.
Both looked forward. They looked backward differently.
Takaichi refrained from visiting the shrine herself, avoiding a step that would almost certainly have caused greater diplomatic friction. But she sent a ritual offering in her capacity as president of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party. Defense Minister Shinjiro Koizumi and three other Cabinet ministers visited the shrine, along with senior LDP officials.
Yasukuni honors Japan's war dead, but it also enshrines 14 wartime leaders convicted as Class-A war criminals, including wartime Prime Minister Hideki Tojo. That has made visits by senior politicians a recurring source of anger in South Korea and China, which suffered under Imperial Japan's colonial rule and wartime aggression.
Seoul responded sharply. The Foreign Ministry said it could not conceal its regret over what it called “anachronistic acts that ignore history” and urged responsible Japanese leaders to “face history squarely” and demonstrate “humble reflection and sincere remorse” through their actions.
The Defense Ministry separately protested Koizumi's visit, saying a sitting Japanese defense minister paying respects at the shrine ran directly counter to efforts to build bilateral relations based on trust.
Koizumi himself described his action very differently.
“I renewed my pledge to renounce war and continue fulfilling the responsibility of Japan, which has consistently made strides as a peace-loving nation since the end of the war,” he said after the visit.
That juxtaposition captures much of the unresolved difficulty between the two countries.
A Japanese politician may regard a visit to Yasukuni as mourning the dead while reaffirming peace. Many Koreans see a senior government official — particularly a defense minister — paying respects at a shrine that also honors convicted wartime leaders and interpret the act through the history of colonization and aggression.
South Korea cannot reasonably demand that Japanese people stop mourning their war dead. Japan cannot reasonably assume that 81 years have stripped symbols associated with wartime leadership of their meaning to the people once subjected to its colonial rule.
As Seoul and Tokyo were carefully choosing how to speak about a war that ended 81 years ago, Russian President Vladimir Putin and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un were drawing directly on the memory of that same conflict to reinforce their present-day partnership.
In his Liberation Day message to Kim, Putin said Moscow-Pyongyang relations had reached an “unprecedentedly high level of comprehensive strategic partnership.”
He invoked the Korean and Soviet struggle against Imperial Japan as the historical foundation of that relationship, describing the wartime experience as a period in which traditions of “comradeship and mutual support” were forged.
Russia and North Korea have strengthened ties since signing their comprehensive strategic partnership treaty in June 2024, bringing their military relationship close to the level of a security alliance. North Korea subsequently sent forces to support Russia's war in Ukraine, according to the reporting material.
Pyongyang's own Liberation Day commemorations reinforced the same narrative.
North Korea's Rodong Sinmun devoted its pages to Kim Il Sung's anti-Japanese armed struggle and the regime's account of liberation. Kim Jong Un visited the Revolutionary Martyrs Cemetery and later the Liberation Tower in Pyongyang, where he honored Soviet soldiers who fought against Japan.
A wreath in his name declared: “We do not forget the feats of the Soviet Army martyrs.”
South Korea and Japan are trying, however imperfectly, to stop history from dictating their future. North Korea and Russia are using history to bind their futures together. The strategic environment therefore creates a peculiar pressure on both Seoul and Tokyo.
South Korea has strong reasons to deepen cooperation with Japan while continuing to insist that historical accountability matters. Japan has strong reasons to preserve relations with South Korea while debating internally how much of its wartime responsibility should remain explicit in contemporary political language.
The danger begins when pragmatism is mistaken for historical closure.
Relations built only on common interests can weaken when those interests change. Relations sustained only by diplomatic management remain vulnerable whenever Yasukuni, wartime labor or another unresolved historical issue returns to public attention.
Trust is harder to construct than cooperation. Governments can agree to cooperate because circumstances demand it. Trust asks societies to believe that the behavior of the other side will remain credible even when immediate political incentives change.
History inevitably enters that calculation.
Tokyo, for its part, has a legitimate case that the Japan of 2026 should also be judged by what the country has done during eight decades since the war, rather than exclusively by what Imperial Japan did before 1945.
But postwar achievement and historical responsibility need not compete.
Indeed, Japan's claim to be the peaceful and dependable Indo-Pacific nation that Takaichi described becomes stronger, not weaker, when its leaders can speak confidently about both.
For Seoul, the corresponding challenge is to ensure that remembrance does not become an automatic veto on cooperation.
The wounds of colonial rule are real. So are the interests of younger generations whose security and prosperity will depend on decisions made in a Northeast Asia very different from that of 1945.
Remembering the past does not require living in it.
The two neighbors do not need identical memories. Such a demand would be unrealistic and perhaps undesirable. South Korea will commemorate liberation. Japan will mourn its war dead and mark the destruction that accompanied defeat.
What matters is whether their different memories can coexist without repeatedly destroying the trust required for the future.
Eighty-one years have produced civility. Strategic necessity is reinforcing it. The unfinished work is turning that civility into trust.
*The author is the managing editor of AJP.
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