Later this year, the former South Korean president Lee Myung-bak set foot on the Sea of Japan islets of Takeshima, controlled by South Korea and claimed by Japan in August 2012, damaging the bilateral relationship.
After a presidential election, Tokyo and Seoul have been so locked in mutual distrust that some experts say there is no way to put their relationship back together.
After landing on the islands in Shimane Prefecture, which is called Dokdo in South Korea, Lee said that Emperor Akihito should apologize to those who died in the movement of independence from Japan's colonial rule of the Korean Peninsula if he wants to visit South Korea. The emotional standoff between the two countries escalated after the remark.
The bilateral relations appeared to turn for the better when the two Asian neighbors agreed to resolve the so-called comfort women issue in December 2015 when Park Geun-hye was South Korea's president. Comfort women is an euphemism for those who suffered under Japan's military brothel system before and during World War II. Under various circumstances, they were forced into sexual servitude, including abduction, deception and poverty.
The fence-mending efforts reflected pressure given by the administration of then U.S. President Barack Obama, but eventually did not last long.
Japan and South Korea conducted so-called shuttle diplomacy, with each country s leader making reciprocal visits to the other nation until December 2011, but since then the practice has been stopped.
Following the South Korean Supreme Court ruling in 2018 ordering a Japanese company to pay compensation to South Korean plaintiffs for wartime labor, Japan introduced stricter controls on exports to South Korea in 2019 and moved to boycott Japanese products spread in South Korea.
In 2020 and onwards, Japan and South Korea have not held a summit, nor have they held any talks on the occasion of international meetings.
Sohn Yul, president of South Korea's East Asia Institute, said that South Korean people came to think that Japan as a whole is leaning to the right and that Japanese people came to believe that they cannot share values with South Korea.
In August 2019, South Korean President Moon Jae-in stressed that his country will never lose to Japan and can overtake Japan's economy, against the backdrop of South Korea's growing economy and improving international status.
In a speech he gave in October last year, Lee Jae-myung, the presidential candidate of South Korea's Democratic Party of Korea, said he will work on building a country that overtakes Japan and leads the world.
Sohn said that these remarks were the flip side of rebellion against Japan or a sense of inferiority toward Japan.
Son said that the mentality behind the remarks by Moon and Lee is due to the older generations in South Korea feeling that they have to learn from Japan and catch up with Japan.
The younger generation does not feel any economic gap between South Korea and Japan and have no sense of inferiority toward Japan, according to Sohn. Many young South Korean people who started to understand things after their country joined the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development in 1996 have only seen Japan stagnating economically and don't see much need to cooperate with the neighboring country.
Few people think the current situation can be left as it is.
A move in South Korea to cash in assets seized from Japanese companies over the wartime labor issue is expected to lead to a more serious standoff between the two countries.
A South Korean district court branch has issued an order for the sale of Nippon Steel Corp. assets in South Korea that have been seized over a wartime labor lawsuit. This is the second court order ordering the sale of a Japanese company's assets in a lawsuit over wartime labor after the one issued in September last year over Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd. assets.
On December 27 last year, Lee Jae-myung met with the Japanese Ambassador to South Korea Koichi Aiboshi and said it would be desirable for Japan and South Korea to cooperate in a future-oriented manner.
Yoon Suk-yeol, the main conservative opposition People Power Party presidential candidate, calls for resuming shuttle diplomacy with Japan.
Sohn said that the young South Koreans' anti-China sentiment is stronger than their anti-Japanese sentiment and that Seoul faces Beijing could be a key factor in bringing South Korea closer to Japan.
Lee claimed that Japan's apology would be important. Even if Yoon wins the presidential election, the foundations of his administration are expected to be weak, as the Democratic Party of Korea holds an overwhelming majority of parliamentary seats.
A source familiar with Japan-South Korea relations said that it would not be easy to solve pending bilateral issues no matter who becomes South Korea's president and that the situation does not warrant optimism.