Park Geun Hye was inaugurated Monday as South Korea's first female president, ushering in what many in Japan hope will be a new era in improved bilateral relations, which were strained by her predecessor, Lee Myung Bak.
But experts in Japan are unsure if Park will deliver on such hopes, although in Japan she is often associated with her father's achievement of nomalizing diplomatic relations with Japan in the 1960s.
Park also takes a softer line and appears more self-restrained than Lee, who last August became the first South Korean leader to visit the Seoul-controlled Takeshima islets, which are known in Lee's country as Dokdo.