Last week, Shinzo Abe and Park Geun-hye, leaders of Japan and South Korea respectively, met in a trilateral meeting arranged by the US on the fringes of the nuclear security summit at The Hague. That this should have caused any surprise is shocking. How can the prime minister of Japan and president of neighbouring South Korea, both more than one year into office, not have met each other before? So poisonous has the atmosphere in northeast Asia become, laced as it is with historical acrimony and unresolved territorial disputes, that the leaders of Washington’s two most important allies in the region are barely on speaking terms.
上週，在美國的安排下，日本首相安倍晉三(Shinzo Abe)和南韓總統朴槿惠(Park Geun-hye)，在海牙核安全峯會間隙的一場三方首腦會議上首次會晤。作爲兩國首腦首次會晤這一事件本身就讓人十分喫驚。日本首相和南韓總統都已上任一年多，怎麼之前還未舉行過會晤？東北亞的政治氛圍極爲惡劣，再加上歷史積怨和仍未解決的領土糾紛，以致兩國領導人幾乎互不講話，而兩國又是美國在該地區最重要的兩個盟國。
