This paper examines Japan-South Korea trade agreements in 1949 and 1950 as the beginning of political and economic relations between Japan and South Korea in the postwar period.<br>After losing in World War II, one of the most difficult challenges that Japanese diplomacy had to confront was the need to revise a vision of postwar Japan toward economic reconstruction. Japan had destroyed a friendly political and economic relationship with Northeast Asian countries because of its past colonial rule and military invasion. However, Japan needed to import a large amount of foodstuffs and raw materials, and export industrial goods as an important source of foreign exchange for recovering from the ruins of the war. Thus, Japanese elites began to regard it as natural that Japan would once again dominate trade with neighboring Asian countries.<br>This vision of Japanese elites was first realized as a part of the Cold War strategies of the United States. Washington believed that Japan should rebuild political and economic relations with the capitalist countries in Northeast Asia in order to strengthen its economy against communist influences. Toward that end, GHQ/SCAP concluded a trade agreement between Japan and South Korea in 1949, creating an import market for foodstuffs and raw materials for Japan, and establishing a market for Japanese exports.<br>As part of this strengthening push, Japanese elites took over American businesses. Because the agreement that the United States had concluded in 1949 was imperfect for them, the Japanese government tried to promote trading interests of the agreement in 1949, and to actualize the vision of Japanese elites revised. As a result, a new trade agreement signed by Japan and South Korea in 1950 facilitated a restored Japanese economic dominance over South Korea.<br>The South Korean government, however, was in direct opposition to the postwar Japan that Japanese elites had created and the United States government had recognized, because both trade agreements ignored Korean trade interests. Although Koreans needed the trade with Japan, it was very important for them to be freed from Japan's colonial rule and to depart from trade systems of the past.<br>The Korean War broke out immediately after the conclusion of the agreement in 1950. Japanese elites welcomed special procurements for the war, and Japanese exports to Korea increased considerably. This, however, was just the type of situation that the South Korean government was anxious to avoid. At the closing of the war's formal hostilities, South Korea's major trading partner shifted from Japan to the United States. Thus the Japanese people lost their first chance for normalizing relations with South Korea in postwar Northeast Asia.