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The rules of the game in political relations between Japan and South Korea changed in recent years as Tokyo began to pursue a "normal diplomacy" with Seoul, Kim Chang Kyoon, an editorial writer for The Chosun Ilbo, told the Feb. 9 symposium.

Kim said that the Japanese and South Korean governments previously treated their mutual ties as a "special relationship" in light of the bitter history of Japan's colonial rule of Korea between 1910 and 1945.