History of Japan–Korea relations

Ancient times

According to the description of the Book of Wei, Yamatai-Koku kingdom in Japan and Four Commanderies of Han had diplomatic exchanges around the third century. By the time of the Three Kingdoms period of Korea, Baekje and Silla sent their princes to the Yamato court in exchange for military support to continue their already-begun military campaigns around 400.

The last king of Baekje, Uija, formed an alliance with Japan and made Prince Buyeo Pung and King Zenko stay there as their hostages. In 660, Baekje fell when it was attacked by Silla and the Tang-dynasty China. Former generals of Baekje, including Gwisil Boksin, asked Japan to return Prince Buyeo Pung and to provide military aid. In 663, Japan, supporting Baekje, was defeated by the allied forces of Tang dynasty China and Silla in Korean Peninsula (the Battle of Baekgang), and the restoration of Baekje ended up in failure. After the fall of Baekje, Japan took in many Korean refugees, but at the same time hostility between Japan and Silla escalated. Empress Jitō honored King Zenko by giving him the hereditary title of Kudara no Konikishi and allowed him to pass on his royal lineage to future generations. According to the Shoku Nihongi (続日本紀), Takano no Niigasa came from a background of the naturalized clansmen Yamato-no-Fumito (和史) and was a 10th-generation descendant of King Muryeong of Baekje. She was chosen as a concubine for Emperor Kōnin and subsequently became the mother of Emperor Kanmu.

Chinese culture was introduced to Japan via the Korean Peninsula, but the Korean value slumped when Chinese culture was introduced directly by Japanese missions to Tang China. Emperor Kanmu severed diplomatic relations with Silla in 799. From the early 9th–11th centuries, Korean pirates plundered the north Kyushu region of Japan and Japan-Korea relations deteriorated.

12th-15th centuries

During the middle Kamakura period, Japan suffered from the Mongol Empire (Yuan dynasty), which was then dominant on the continent, and its subject kingdom, the Goryeo of Korea. The History of Yuan states that the Mongol invasions of Japan began with King Chungnyeol of Goryeo "persistently recommending an expedition to the east to Yuan's emperor in order to force Japan to become its subject." In order to invade Japan, the Mongols ordered the Korean king to manufacture 1000 warships. The two Mongol - Korean fleets were destroyed by storms, giving rise to the myth of the Kamikaze, the divine wind that protected Japan. At the time of Mongol invasions of Japan, Japanese people were scared by the attacks of the Mongol and Goryeo army, saying, 'moko kokuri no oni ga kuru (the devils of the Mongol and Goryeo will come)', which phrase later came to represent something scary; thus a tradition spread to the whole country to scare children by saying 'mukuri kokuri, oni ga kuru' to make them behave themselves.

During the Muromachi period and the Sengoku period in Japan, samurai warriors and pirates from the Kyushu region attacked ships along the coasts of China and Korea and were feared as Japanese pirates (called "wako" in Japanese).

In 1592 and 1598 Toyotomi Hideyoshi, who had unified the nation, ordered daimyōs (feudal lords) all over the country to the conquest of Ming Dynasty China by way of Korea, after the latter's refusal to allow Japanese forces to march through. Japan completed the occupation of the Korean peninsula in three months. The Korean king Seonjo fled to China and asked Ming for help. The Chinese emperor sent his army and recaptured the Korean peninsula. However, the Japanese military gathered in Seoul and counterattacked China. Amid the stagnation of the battle between the Ming army and the Japanese army, Hideyoshi died in September 1598. The Council of Five Elders ordered the remaining Japanese forces in Korea to retreat. Japan then initiated a series of policies called Sakoku to close Japan. It forbade Japanese to go abroad in ships, and initiated the death penalty for Japanese returning to Japan from abroad. This ended Japanese piracy definitively.

16th-19th centuries

At the end of the 16th century, the Bunroku-Keicho War broke off the relationship between Korea and Japan. However, the Tokugawa shogunate started trading again with Korea by concluding the Treaty of Giyu with the Sō clan of Tsushima Island in 1609, establishing a relationship of near equality through mutual visits of Korean messengers. Tsushinshi were sent from Korea to pay homage to a new shogun or to celebrate the birth of an heir to a shogun. Korean envoys were provided with the same role as an envoy to bring tributes to a Chinese emperor or was used for showing the prestige of Tokugawa shogunate.

In the 19th century, a severe conflict at court between Heungseon Daewongun, the biological father of Gojong (king of the Joseon Dynasty), and Gojong's wife Queen Min continued. In 1882, Daewongun was seized by the Qing-dynasty China troops, and confined in Tianjin City (Jingo Incident). The Min family including Queen Min assumed authority, but relations between Japan and Korea did not turn better. Queen Min were changing their policies from pro-Japanese to Qing Dynasty China. In the Sino-Japanese War, When Japan beat China in 1895, the Treaty of Shimonoseki was concluded, and removed China's sovereignty Korea. The Korea moved closer to Russia. Japan became alarmed when Russia enhanced its grip and influence over the Korean peninsula by acquiring vital state assets such as the mining rights in Chongsong and Gyeongwon sold off by Queen Min, timber rights in the north, and tariff rights, and purchased back and restored many of these. (The assassination of Queen Min occurred during this period).

20th century

In 1904, the Russo-Japanese War began, and Korea declared to be neutral. Japan conducted the Japan–Korea Treaty of 1904 immediately after the start of the war to eliminate restrictions in its military actions in the Korean Peninsula. Furthermore, the Japan–Korea Agreement of August 1904 was concluded in August, which brought the Korean government to receive Japanese financial and diplomatic advisors as well as to sit at the negotiating table for the conclusion of a treaty. After that, the Japan–Korea Treaty of 1905 was made, and Japan took over the diplomatic right of the Korean Empire, which practically made Korea the protectorate of Japan. However, Gojong, who did not accept the conclusion of this Treaty, dispatched secret envoys to the second Hague Peace Conference in 1907 in order to denounce the conclusion of the treaty as compulsive and invalid, but the trial failed and the Korea-Japan relationship deteriorated. On July 24, they concluded the Japan–Korea Treaty of 1907 to grasp domestic administration authority, and disbanded the army of the Korean Empire on August 1 immediately after that. Itō Hirobumi, who was the first prime minister of Japan and one of the elder statesmen and was Resident-General of Korea opposed to the annexation of Korea. However, The power balance of the Japan domestic grew in favor of the annexation, because an influential statesmen group objecting to the early annexation disappeared due to the assassination of Ito Hirobumi by An Jung-geun in 1909. On August 22, 1910, annexing Korea by signing the Japan-Korea Annexation Treaty.

Ancient times

Relations between Japan and Korea go back at least two millennia. After the 3rd century BC, people from Goguryeo, Baekje, Silla and Gaya in the Korean Peninsula, started to move into the Kyushu region of Japan. Many of knowledge from Asia were transmitted to Japan via Korea.

There are indications of cross-border political influence, but with varying accounts as to in which direction the political influence flowed. General consensus among Korean historians is that people who came from the continent through Korea to Japan became the ruling class of ancient Japan. Also, it is believed that the ruling class had close ties with Baekje, one of the three Korean kingdoms. Buddhism was introduced to Japan from Baekje of Korea. In 663, Japan, supporting Baekje, was defeated the allied forces of Tang China and Silla in the Korean Peninsula (the Battle of Baekgang), and the restoration of Baekje ended up in failure. Japan has had official contact with the Chinese since the 7th to 8th century.

13th-19th centuries

From the early 13th–15th centuries there were a series of skirmishes by pockets of Japanese pirates on the Korean coast. During the Japanese invasions of Korea (1592–1598), much of Korea's cultural heritage was destroyed and looted by the invading Japanese armies. Although Korean land forces lost most of their land battles (with only a handful of notable exceptions), the Korean Navy won almost all the naval battles with decisive defeats of the Japanese fleet by Admiral Yi Sun-sin (who never lost a battle; the only battle Korean fleets lost to the Japanese was not commanded by Admiral Yi), cut off Japanese supply lines and helped drive the invading forces out of Korea. Among the atrocities of the Japanese soldiers was the practice of cutting off noses and ears of slain enemy soldiers, which evolved into cutting off those of the living and the civilians in order to fulfill the "kill quota" assigned to the troops. Hence the origin of the Korean saying to misbehaving children, "Ear-nose devils are coming!". After the wars, Korean missions were dispatched 11 times to the Tokugawa shogunate of Japan between 1607 and 1811.

With the erosion of Qing Chinese influences in the 19th century, Korea began to avoid Chinese influence, but also Western and Japanese control. Japan was rapidly modernizing in the second half of the 19th century and showing a keen interest in Korea, especially as it was the closest potential point of expansion directly on the Asian mainland. It was perceived that Japan would be vulnerable to any power that controlled the Korean peninsula. With the defeat of Qing forces in Korea in 1895, the murder of Empress Myeongseong by Japanese agents, and Japan's subsequent defeat of Imperial Russia in 1905, Korea came definitively under Japanese influence.

20th-21st centuries

In 1910, with the signing of the Japan–Korea Annexation Treaty, the last threads of Korean independence were severed and the Korean Empire was absorbed into the Empire of Japan. During the colonial period, more than 100,000 Koreans were forced to serve in the Imperial Japanese Army. Korean women were forced to the war front to serve the Imperial Japanese Army as sexual slaves, called comfort women.

At the end of World War II, Korea regained its independence after 35 years of Japanese rule. Per the Yalta Conference agreements, Soviet forces accepted surrender of Japanese forces in northern Korea above the 38th parallel, and U.S. forces south of that line. Korea was then divided into Soviet (North Korean) and U.S. (South Korean) spheres. South Korea refused diplomatic and trade relations with Japan, using Japan as a domestic bugbear to rally support for the South Korean government. The early ROK (Republic of Korea; South Korea) government derived its legitimacy from its opposition to Japan and North Korea, portraying South Korea as under threat from the North and South. The diplomatic relationship between Japan and South Korea was established in 1965, when the Treaty on Basic Relations was signed; Japan subsequently recognized the Republic of Korea (the official name of South Korea) as the only legitimate government on the Korean Peninsula. As such, North Korea does not have official diplomatic ties with Japan.

In recent years, the two countries would jointly host the 2002 FIFA World Cup, and South Korean pop culture experienced major popularity in Japan, a phenomenon dubbed the "Korean Wave" (韓流) in Japan. The Korean Wave has sparked a fad for Korean movies, dramas and pop music in Japan.

in 2015, relations between the two nations reached a high point when South Korea and Japan addressed the issue of comfort women, or sex slaves, used by Japanese military during World War II. Fumio Kishida, the Japanese Foreign Minister, pledged that the Japanese government would donate 1 billion yen ($8.3 million USD, 2015) to help pay for the care of the surviving former sex slaves. Furthermore, Japanese Prime Minister, Shinzō Abe, made public apologies to the "women who underwent immeasurable and painful experiences and suffered insurable physical and psychological wounds as comfort women". South Korean president, Park Geun-hye, hailed this deal as a sign of positive progression in Japanese and South Korean relations.