For years, two of America’s closest allies, Japan and South Korea, have mostly marched to the beat of their own drums. As neighbors in northeast Asia, they have often cooperated. But the brutal history of Japan’s 1910-1945 occupation of the Korean Peninsula was always an emotional backbeat preventing close ties. On Tuesday, after a bilateral summit, their leaders – who both took office last year – changed the tempo quite a bit.
In a gesture purposely human rather than diplomatic, Japanese Prime Minister Takaichi Sanae and South Korean President Lee Jae-myung sat down and played the drums together. They performed the song “Golden” from the 2025 animated film “KPop Demon Hunters.” Ms. Takaichi had once been a drummer in a heavy metal band while Mr. Lee had long dreamed of playing drums.
The symbolism – dubbed “cymbalism” – of sharing music was made even stronger by the fact that each leader represents a political faction in their country prone not to compromise on moving beyond remaining differences or grievances over their shared 20th-century history. Any agreement between these two leaders is more likely to stick than previous attempts to reach closure on the past.
“There are uncomfortable and difficult aspects to our relationship,” Mr. Lee said. “But there are also constructive ones. The task before us is to strengthen the latter and prevent the former from defining our future.”
The warming of ties was enhanced by the Japanese leader holding the summit in her home town of Nara. The ancient capital is the place where Japan adopted much of Korean culture centuries ago. They toured a temple founded around A.D. 607, a gesture reflecting a new focus on a history that binds the two nations.
Each country has external reasons to draw closer. Both China and the United States have created new uncertainties in the region, while North Korea continues building up its nuclear and missile arsenal. And technological frontiers, including artificial intelligence, compel each nation to cooperate.
“As the global landscape grows increasingly turbulent, the South Korea-Japan relationship has become more vital than at any point in history,” Mr. Lee said.
To ensure a “future-oriented” relationship, the two leaders decided to proceed with small, humanitarian gestures to deal with the injustices of Japan’s colonial legacy. They will jointly identify the remains of Korean forced laborers killed at a Japanese mining tragedy in 1942. And the two countries are working on identifying Korean victims of a passenger ship that exploded in 1945. They also appear ready to seal agreements on trade issues.
Writing in Foreign Affairs, Brandeis University professor Ayumi Teraoka, noted: “This unlikely duo could be precisely the partnership needed to put the Japanese-South Korean relationship on a more resilient footing.”
