America’s closest Indo-Pacific allies are cosying up

WHEN Kishida Fumio arrives in Seoul on May 7th, he will become the first Japanese prime minister to make an official visit to South Korea in more than a decade. His trip is testament to how fast the testy relationship between the neighbours and American allies has improved since early March, when Yoon Suk-yeol, South Korea’s president, announced a plan to end a festering dispute over Japanese wartime forced labour and then jetted to Tokyo for a summit.

After bonding over omurice, a nostalgic Japanese egg dish, the two leaders set to work. Their governments revived an intelligence-sharing agreement signed in 2016 but put on ice under Mr Yoon’s predecessor. They lifted export controls and trade barriers imposed when the forced-labour dispute heated up. A bilateral security dialogue took place last month for the first time in five years; the two countries’ finance ministers met this week for the first time in seven years. Japanese and South Korean tourists are flocking to each other’s countries.