For example, following President Park Geun-hye’s request that Xi honor the Korean assassin of a Japanese prime minister, to which Xi readily agreed, she began to discuss joining the US-led Trans-Pacific Partnership free-trade negotiations, in order to assuage the US. As China continued to pursue an anti-Japanese propaganda campaign throughout 2013, Park felt obliged to make some effort to revive ties with Japan by sending a private envoy to Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to seek talks on reconciling their disputes.