The administration of South Korea President Yoon Suk-yeol has in recent days taken some of its first concrete steps to shore up ties with Tokyo that had soured over wartime history and trade, with momentum expected to grow after a key Japanese election on Sunday.
On Monday, South Korean First Vice Foreign Minister Cho Hyun-dong presided over the first meeting of a public-private body set up to help resolve wartime labor issues stemming from Japan’s 1910-45 colonial rule of the Korean Peninsula.
“The government will listen to opinions of those who were directly involved in the wartime forced labor issue and from various fields, while making continuous efforts in seeking a reasonable solution” through future meetings of the public-private body, the South Korean Foreign Ministry said in a statement Monday.
Experts and lawyers for South Korean plaintiffs who won Supreme Court compensation cases against Japanese firms in 2018 will be asked to offer their views on the issue, the ministry said, with more meetings expected to take place this month.
The meeting of the new forum was one of the Yoon administration’s first concrete moves toward resolving the long-standing row between the two neighbors since the South Korean president took office on May 10.
It also came as Yoon again stressed the need for the two countries to work together to address the issues that have chilled bilateral ties.
“The two countries should make efforts and combine their wisdom to build a future-oriented partnership,” Yoon told Masakazu Tokura, leader of the Japan Business Federation, at a meeting in Seoul on Monday.
After that meeting, Tokura told reporters that he had asked Yoon to hold summit talks with Prime Minister Fumio Kishida to improve bilateral ties.
Earlier Monday, Tokura also met Huh Chang-soo, chairman of the Federation of Korean Industries, and the two business leaders agreed to deepen cooperation to build future-oriented relations. In a statement, the two advocated an active role for the private sector in improving bilateral ties based on the spirit of a 1998 declaration made by then-South Korean President Kim Dae-jung and then-Prime Minister Keizo Obuchi.
As an initial step toward stronger ties between Tokyo and Seoul, Yoon has vowed to bolster the trilateral security relationship between the two and their mutual ally, the United States. Washington has encouraged the move — especially amid North Korea’s growing nuclear threat — and the three held their first trilateral meeting since 2017 on the sidelines of last month’s NATO summit in Spain.
Still, although Yoon and Kishida’s teams are aligned in terms of responding firmly to the North Korean threat — especially in the trilateral format — Tokyo has remained cautious about a quick improvement in bilateral ties.
Kishida’s administration has said it will wait for the Yoon government’s response to the wartime labor issue before deciding on how to proceed, including whether a leaders summit ultimately takes place. But it’s unclear how the Kishida administration views the new South Korean public-private body on wartime labor.
Queried about the move at a news conference Tuesday, Chief Cabinet Secretary Hirokazu Matsuno refrained from comment but reiterated that Japan “will communicate closely with the South Korean side based on its consistent position in order to restore healthy relations.”
On the sidelines of the NATO summit, Kishida told Yoon that he hopes the South Korean leader will work to restore the countries’ “extremely severe” relations to “a healthy state,” according to the Japanese Foreign Ministry.
For his part, Yoon — who had a razor-thin victory in the presidential election and faces an opposition-controlled National Assembly — has appeared unhurried and deliberate in taking steps to improve ties.
In a sign of this calibrated approach, Yoon was quoted as telling Kishida during their conversation that he intends to resolve pending issues of concern to both nations swiftly after Japan’s Upper House election on Sunday.
Conservative members of Kishida's ruling Liberal Democratic Party have objected to talks with the South Korean side if Seoul has no solution to present, and Kishida himself appears to have come to the conclusion that any work on the issue is better left until after the election.
The LDP-led ruling bloc is widely expected to win a solid victory in that poll, affording Kishida the political capital needed to address politically sensitive issues like Tokyo’s relationship with Seoul.
Under Yoon’s predecessor, Moon Jae-in, bilateral ties deteriorated over wartime labor and “comfort women” — those who suffered under Japan’s military brothel system before and during World War II — as well as Tokyo’s export curbs against Seoul.
In the 2018 wartime labor cases, the South Korean Supreme Court ordered two Japanese companies — Nippon Steel and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries — to pay damages to Korean plaintiffs for their forced labor under Japan’s colonial rule of the peninsula.
The firms refused to comply with the orders, heeding Tokyo’s position that all wartime compensation issues were settled “completely and finally” by a 1965 agreement that normalized bilateral ties and saw Japan provide grants and loans to South Korea.
Bruce Klingner, a senior research fellow for Northeast Asia at the Heritage Foundation think tank, said that although “both sides are saying the right things,” including Yoon’s repeated pledges to improve ties, obstacles — such as a powerful opposition in Seoul and reticence in Tokyo — could emerge to make any progress “very difficult.”
“Just a single interaction by someone in Japan or Korea could undermine that whole effort,” he told a recent panel discussion. The two countries are “moving in the right direction, but there are a lot of land mines on that road.”
Information from Kyodo added
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