South Korea

Japan

JapanMain article: See also: and has become an issue known as the

Although there were no formal diplomatic ties between South Korea and Japan after the end of World War II, South Korea and Japan signed the in 1965 to establish diplomatic ties. There is heavy because of a number of unsettled , many of which stem from the period of after the . During , more than 100,000 Koreans served in the . Korean women were forced to the war front to serve the Imperial Japanese Army as sexual slaves, called .

Longstanding issues such as against Korean civilians, the relating Japanese atrocities during World War II, the territorial disputes over the , known in South Korea as "Dokdo" and in Japan as "Takeshima", and visits by Japanese politicians to the , honoring Japanese soldiers killed at war. continue to trouble Korean-Japanese relations. The Liancourt Rocks were the first Korean territories to be forcibly colonized by Japan in 1905. Though it was again returned to Korea along with the rest of the its territory in 1951 with the signing of the Treaty of San Francisco, Japan does not recant on its claims that the Liancourt Rocks are Japanese territory. In response to then-Prime Minister 's visits to the Yasukuni Shrine, former suspended all summit talks between South Korea and Japan in 2009.