Deep historical grievances among China, Japan and South Korea—rooted in conflicting textbook narratives and national memories—continue to fuel antagonism, mistrust and nationalist exploitation of maritime disputes, hindering regional cooperation and stability. 

Soft-power approaches through education and cultural exchange have largely failed so far due to mutual distrust, language barriers, resource inequalities and nationalist media hostility, yet practical steps such as joint history projects, student exchanges, language learning, non-political research collaboration and cultural diplomacy can help overcome these obstacles. 

Creating an East Asia Education and Culture Council under the ASEAN 3 framework, modelled on successful programmes like Erasmus, could institutionalise these efforts, foster shared identity and critical thinking among future generations, and complement traditional security and economic measures to reduce long-term tensions.

Reducing tensions in the most volatile region of the globe, East Asia, can benefit greatly from novel, underutilised approaches such as enhancing education and cultural cooperation. Each of the three major countries, China, Japan, and South Korea, harbours historical grievances that their collective memory never seems to be able to forgive or forget. Their fundamentally different interpretations of the past as presented in school textbooks fuel deep-seated antagonism towards the others. Such rivalry has for decades prevented the three major countries from cooperating in ways that would help to reduce tensions and enhance stability in a most volatile region. In a region in which so much is at stake, it is important to pursue also nonconventional, “soft-power” approaches in addition to those of the more traditional kind, such as militarised security arrangements and increasing economic interdependence.

Historical grievances, embedded in the respective national narratives of China, Japan and South Korea, represent one of the major challenges in relation to fostering peace and stability in East Asia. There are significant differences in the respective descriptions of past conflicts as presented........

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