Streets are lined with signboards in Japanese. Clerks hail shoppers in the language. At department stores, high-tech products from Korea and Japan compete for shoppers’ attention.
The shopping area of Seoul is a snapshot of the economic relations between the two neighbors, closely intertwined but fiercely competitive.
A hundred years ago, Korea, then an impoverished, agricultural society, became a colony of Japan, Asia’s first country to embrace Western modernism. Korea was liberated in 1945 as the result of Japan’s defeat in World War II. Relations were virtually severed for two decades until they restored diplomatic ties in 1965.
Despite historical fissures, economic ties grew exponentially thanks to geographical and cultural closeness, as well as mutually complementary industrial structures.
Bilateral trade surged to $71.1 billion last year from a paltry $220 million in 1965. Korea is now Japan’s third-largest trading partner and Japan is Korea’s second largest.
Their economic ties since 1965 can be divided into three periods, characterized by rapid expansion of industrial and economic exchanges (1965-1980), deepening trade imbalances (1981-1993) and comparative stagnation in ties (1994-now), according to Lee Bu-hyung of the Hyundai Research Institute.
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