Japan’s incoming Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is hurrying to reset the frayed relationship between Seoul and Tokyo. He took a conciliatory gesture toward Seoul just one day after South Korea elected its first female president on Dec. 19.

According to news reports, the hawkish Japanese leader has decided to put off his plan to upgrade the status of Takeshima Day from a provincial government ceremony to a central government event.

Takeshima is Japan’s name for Dokdo, Korea’s easternmost islets. Japan’s Shimane prefecture has since 2005 observed Feb. 22 as Takeshima Day to assert Japan’s sovereignty over the Korean territory.

During his campaign for the Dec. 16 elections for the lower house, Abe pledged to hold the ceremony on a central government level, demonstrating his determination to challenge Seoul’s control of the islets.

While holding off on his Takeshima Day plan, Abe has also offered to send a special envoy to Seoul to deliver a personal letter to President-elect Park Geun-hye.

According to reports, Abe has appointed as his envoy Fukushiro Nukaga, a former finance minister who currently heads the Japanese side of the Japan-South Korea Parliamentarians’ Union.

Nugata contacted an aide to Park on Dec. 20 and asked if he could meet the president-elect in Seoul during the weekend to deliver Abe’s letter proposing an early summit.

But Park reportedly told the aide that she could not meet the envoy during the weekend because of her tight schedule. She was also quoted as saying that it would be better to arrange the meeting after Abe’s inauguration as prime minister on Dec. 26.

Although Park cited her schedule for declining Abe’s overture, there could be other reasons. She might have thought that the ultra conservative Japanese leader was not really ready to mend ties with Seoul.

In our view, Abe has some homework to do before rushing to hold a summit with Park. His decision to put on hold the Takeshima Day pledge is a step in the right direction. Yet he needs to take other measures to restore bilateral relations.

During the campaign period, Abe had done and pledged to do many things that could further strain the ties. For instance, he visited the Yasukuni Shrine, which honors Japan’s war dead, in the full knowledge that it would anger neighboring countries.

Furthermore, he denied the Japanese military’s involvement in forcing Korean women into sexual slavery during World War II. He pledged to respond to Seoul’s demand for compensation for the victims by presenting counterevidence.

He even suggested the need to replace the Kono statement, the 1993 statement issued by then Chief Cabinet Secretary Yohei Kono to offer the Japanese government’s formal apology for the imperial army’s recruitment of Korean women as sexual slaves.

Abe needs to figure out the views of the Korean president-elect on these issues. Park has consistently pointed out that genuine reconciliation and cooperation among Korea, Japan and China would not be achieved without a correct understanding of history.

In an article published in the Wall Street Journal on Nov. 13, Park states: “Perhaps the most important ingredient in beginning genuine reconciliation is the need for a correct understanding of history among Northeast Asian countries.”

Referring to West German Chancellor Willy Brandt’s landmark visit in 1970 to the monument commemorating the Warsaw Ghetto uprising, Park demands that “the region’s main historical and wartime transgressor” make corresponding steps and fundamentally address outstanding historical issues such as comfort women.

Only then, she notes, “will Japan be welcomed as a respectable and leading Asian country.”

Park made the same point in her victory speech on Thursday. She said she would try to promote reconciliation, cooperation and peace in Northeast Asia based on a “correct understanding of history.”

Her remark was directed at Japan and should be understood in the context of Korea’s demand that Japan make amends for the atrocities it committed during the colonial rule.

Abe should take Park’s views seriously. On Thursday, he said Japan should cooperate with Korea closely to ensure peace and security in Northeast Asia. But he needs to understand that peace and security in this region cannot be promoted without a clear understanding of history in the first place.