Japan, Korea reconcile

The greatest challenge to peace in East Asia arises from authoritarian China, so it has been worrying that one of the most strained relationships has been between democracies Japan and South Korea. The resolution between those two nations of a long-standing historical dispute, announced in December, is good news.

China’s growing prosperity has been a boon for hundreds of millions of Chinese and should be welcomed by other nations. But China’s Communist rulers have married economic power to a more assertive, even bullying foreign policy. Its rising militarization has worried China’s neighbours.

In such a climate, alliances among the Pacific region’s stable democracies become ever more important. But Japan and South Korea have been feuding over the legacy of Japan’s colonialization of the Korean Peninsula in the last century, specifically what are euphemistically called “comfort women” — Korean girls and women taken from their homes and forced to engage in sex with Japanese soldiers during the Second World War.

Now the two countries have “finally and irreversibly” resolved that dispute. Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe expressed “sincere apologies and remorse,” and pledged $8.3 million to a fund that will benefit surviving sex slaves. South Korean President Park Geun-hye promised that her nation will consider the matter closed and refrain from “accusing or criticizing” Japan on the issue in international forums.

Both leaders deserve credit for putting national and global interests ahead of political obstacles. The settlement, if implemented in good faith, removes the biggest obstacle to improved relations between the two countries. That is good news for the new year.