Alexis Dudden engagingly explores how the nexus of politics, war memory and apology shapes contemporary trilateral relations between Korea, Japan and the United States. She addresses critical questions concerning the meanings of apology for different people and why repentance for the past is so difficult to express and seldom judged sufficient.
In exploring a number of flash points, "Troubled Apologies" explains what is at stake "in the contest to win narrating Northeast Asia's twentieth century." The fractious discourse focuses on the disputed islets of Dokdo/Takeshima, botched apologies, "illegal Japan" and U.S. wrongs in Korea and Japan.
Dudden does not concern herself with assessing who is right, although she can be quite withering when it comes to official positions. Rather, her approach is to examine the roots and consequences of these divisive perspectives.