What Brought Them Together? Comparative Analysis of the Normalization Processes of North Korea-Japan and South Korea-Japan

Most scholarship on the Korean-Japanese relationship has been focused on explaining what separates the Koreans from the Japanese rather than what had brought them together. Nevertheless, this article seeks to focus its analy- sis on what brought the two Koreas and Japan together. This article compares the South Korea-Japan normalization negotiations with the North Korea-Ja- pan negotiations and purports that the controversial issues that recurrently surfaced in the process of the negotiations ultimately did not serve as a big hindrance to furthering the normalization progress in the latter and conclud-ing negotiations in the former. Moreover, it suggests two possible scenarios under which normalization between North Korea and Japan could occur and concludes that Kim Jong-un’s personality will play the most critical role in de- termining the direction of normalization talks.