YOKOTA AIR BASE, Japan — South Korea’s plans to join a Japan Self-Defense Forces fleet review next month may be a sign of warming relations between the United States’ most important allies in the Far East, analysts say. A long-held rift between Tokyo and Seoul deepened in 2012 after then-South Korean President Lee Myung-bak visited a small cluster of disputed islands known as Dokdo in Korea and Takeshima in Japan. Later that year, Japan and South Korea ditched plans for an intelligence-sharing agreement amid public opposition in South Korea. Junya Nishino, a Keio University law professor and Korea expert, recently told reporters at the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Japan that relations...
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