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Relations between Japan and South Korea are perplexing: the two countries are major trade partners and popular tourist destinations for each other\\u2019s people, they are democracies in a region with numerous authoritarian regimes and alliance partners of the United States. Yet, despite all this, their relations are troubled by territorial and historical issues that limit mutual understanding and cooperation.

To learn more about these contentious relations, we met with Scott Snyder to talk about his latest book, The Japan-South Korea Identity Clash: East Asian Security and the United States (Columbia University Press), which he wrote together with Brad Glosserman. We discussed the two countries\' identities and perceptions of each other, the role that Japanese and Korean political leaders play in this context, the stakes that the United States has in this situation \\u2013 and a possible way forward.

Scott Snyder is Senior Fellow for Korea studies and Director of the program on U.S.-Korea policy at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), a think tank based in Washington D.C. He has received his BA from Rice University and his MA from the regional studies East Asia program at Harvard University. He was also a Thomas G. Watson fellow at Yonsei University in Seoul. We previously interviewed him in Episode 22 about South Korea\\u2019s role as a Middle Power.