SEOUL, South Korea, 7 May: Japan\u2019s prime minister expressed sympathy for the suffering of Korean forced laborers during Japan\u2019s colonial rule, as he and his South Korean counterpart on Sunday renewed resolve to overcome historical grievances and strengthen cooperation in the face of shared challenges such as North Korea\u2019s nuclear program.
\nComments by Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida during his second summit in less than two months with South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol are closely watched in Seoul.
\nYoon has faced domestic criticism that he had preemptively made concessions to Tokyo without getting corresponding steps in return. Kishida\u2019s statement, which avoided a new, direct apology over the colonization but still sympathized with the Korean victims, suggests he felt pressure to say something to maintain momentum for improved ties.
\n\u201cAnd personally, I have strong pain in my heart as I think of the extreme difficulty and sorrow that many people had to suffer under the severe environment in those days,\u201d Kishida told a joint news conference with Yoon, referring to Japan\u2019s 1910-45 colonial rule of the Korean Peninsula.
\n\u201cJapan and South Korea share various history and development, and I believe it is my responsibility as prime minister of Japan to cooperate with President Yoon and the South Korean side as we follow through the effort of our predecessors who have also overcome the difficult times,\u201d he said.
\nKishida arrived in South Korea earlier Sunday for a two-day visit, which reciprocates a mid-March trip to Tokyo by Yoon and marks the first exchange of visits between the leaders of the Asian neighbors in 12 years.
\nThe back-to-back summits were largely meant to resolve the countries\u2019 bitter disputes caused by the 2018 court rulings in South Korea that ordered two Japanese companies to financially compensate some of their aging former Korean employees for colonial-era forced labor. Japan has refused to abide by the verdicts, arguing that all compensation issues were already settled when the two countries normalized ties in 1965.
\nThe wrangling led to the countries downgrading each other\u2019s trade status and Seoul\u2019s previous liberal government threatening to spike a military intelligence-sharing pact. The strained South Korea-Japan ties complicated U.S. efforts to build a stronger regional alliance to better cope with rising Chinese influence and North Korean nuclear threats.
\nIn March, however, Yoon\u2019s conservative government took a major step toward mending the ties by announcing it would use local funds to compensate the forced labor victims without demanding contributions from Japanese companies. Later in March, Yoon traveled to Tokyo to meet with Kishida, and the two agreed to resume leadership-level visits and other talks. Their governments have since taken steps to withdraw their economic retaliatory steps against each other.
\nYoon\u2019s push, however, drew strong backlash from some of the forced labor victims and his liberal rivals at home, who have demanded direct compensation from the Japanese companies. Yoon has defended his move, saying greater cooperation with Japan is required to jointly tackle North Korea\u2019s advancing nuclear program, the intensifying U.S.-China strategic rivalry and global supply chain challenges.
\n\u201cWe should stay away from a thinking that we must not make a step forward for our future cooperation because our history issues aren\u2019t settled completely,\u201d Yoon said Sunday. AP<\/p>\n
Kishida reaffirmed his government upholds the positions of previous Japanese administrations, including the landmark 1998 joint declaration by Tokyo and Seoul on improving ties, but didn\u2019t make a new apology. In that declaration, then-Japanese Prime Minister Keizo Obuchi said: \u201cI feel acute remorse and offer an apology from my heart\u201d over the colonial rule.
\nJapanese governments have expressed remorse or apologies over the colonial period numerous times. But some Japanese officials and politicians have occasionally made comments that have been accused of whitewashing Tokyo\u2019s wartime aggressions, prompting Seoul to urge Tokyo to make new, more sincere apologies.
\nAhead of his summit with Yoon, Kishida and his wife, Yuko Kishida, visited the national cemetery in Seoul, where they burned incense and paid a silent tribute before a memorial. Buried or honored in the cemetery are mostly Korean War dead, but include Korean independence fighters during the period of Japanese rule. Kishida was the first Japanese leader to visit the place in 12 years.
\n\u201cKishida\u2019s comments about Koreans who suffered under Japanese colonialism may be criticized for not being more specific about historical perpetrators and more apologetic toward historical victims,\u201d Leif-Eric Easley, a professor at Ewha University in Seoul, said. \u201cBut Kishida did visit South Korea\u2019s national cemetery and said that his heartfelt views, respect for the past, and recognition of current global challenges produce a sense of responsibility for improving Seoul-Tokyo relations.\u201d
\nYoon said talks among Seoul, Tokyo and Washington are underway to implement their earlier agreement on sharing information on North Korean missile launches. Yoon said he and Kishida reaffirmed that North Korea\u2019s nuclear and missile programs pose a grave threat to the two countries and the rest of the world.
\nIn late April, Yoon made a state visit to the United States and agreed with President Joe Biden to reinforce deterrence capabilities against North Korea\u2019s nuclear threats. During a joint news conference, Biden thanked Yoon \u201cfor your political courage and personal commitment to diplomacy with Japan.\u201d
\nYoon, Biden and Kishida are expected to hold a trilateral meeting later this month on the sidelines of the Group of Seven meetings in Hiroshima to discuss North Korea, China\u2019s assertiveness and Russia\u2019s war on Ukraine. Yoon was invited as one of eight outreach nations.
\nKishida said he and Yoon would pay respects before a memorial for Korean atomic bomb victims in Hiroshima.
\nSeoul and Tokyo have a slew of other sensitive historical and territorial disputes, mostly related to the Japanese colonization. In a reminder of the delicate nature of their ties, diplomats between the two countries last week spatted over a South Korean lawmaker\u2019s visit to disputed islets located in the waters between the two countries. Earlier, Seoul protested Kishida\u2019s offering of religious offerings to a Tokyo shrine that it views as a symbol of Japan\u2019s wartime aggression. AP<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
SEOUL, South Korea, 7 May: Japan\u2019s prime minister expressed sympathy for the suffering of Korean forced laborers during Japan\u2019s colonial rule, as he and his South Korean counterpart on Sunday renewed resolve to overcome historical grievances and strengthen cooperation in the face of shared challenges such as North Korea\u2019s nuclear program. Comments by Japanese Prime […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-215898","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-world"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/215898","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=215898"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/215898\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=215898"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=215898"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=215898"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}