Following their meeting at the presidential office in Seoul on May 7, 2023, South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol, right, and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida hold a joint press conference.
South Korea's SEOUL
Yoon Suk Yeol, the president of South Korea, met with Fumio Kishida, the prime minister of Japan, over the weekend in Seoul. Following their meeting, Yoon Suk Yeol urged on government officials to devise concrete actions to speed up security and economic cooperation with Japan.
At their meeting on Sunday, the leaders vowed to put the past behind them and strengthen their cooperation in the face of the North Korean nuclear threat and other difficulties. Kishida expressed sympathy for the Koreans who were forced into industrial slavery during Japan's colonial rule of the Korean Peninsula from 1910 to 1945.
South Korea's response to the summit, which was the second meeting of the leaders in less than two months, was unresolved. Critics, such as Yoon's liberal adversaries who hold the majority in the National Assembly, claimed that Kishida's remarks fell short of a real apology and charged Yoon with absolving Japan of responsibility for prior aggressions while promoting bilateral relations.
Others viewed the summit as evidence that the two important U.S. allies are finally cooperating more closely with Washington after years of disagreement.
On the fringes of the Group of Seven meetings in Hiroshima, Yoon, Kishida, and President Joe Biden are anticipated to meet in a trilateral setting later this month to talk about North Korea and the geopolitical difficulties brought on by Russia's invasion of Ukraine and China's assertive foreign policy. Yoon was chosen as one of eight outreach nations, despite the fact that South Korea is not a member of the G-7.
Yoon gave them instructions to create follow-up measures to carry out bilateral security, economic, and technology cooperation and to boost cultural and youth exchanges between the countries during a meeting with his main sectaries on Monday. things were covered during his conversation with Kishida. Yoon's office had no further details.
Before leaving Seoul, Kishida had a press conference in which he expressed his desire to deepen his friendship with Yoon and "work together to carve out a new era."
Kishida emphasized the importance of facilitating people-to-people exchanges between the countries, saying that doing so would "help further promote our mutual understanding and give widths and thickness to our relations." Earlier on Monday, he had separate meetings with groups of South Korean lawmakers and business leaders.
Yoon's journey to Tokyo in the middle of March was reciprocated by Kishida's trip to Seoul. The two country's leaders are meeting for the first time in 12 years.
The back-to-back talks were primarily intended to settle contentious disagreements brought about by South Korean court decisions in 2018 that required two Japanese corporations to pay some of their former Korean employees for forced labor committed before the end of World War II. These decisions infuriated Japan, which maintains that a treaty that normalized relations in 1965 resolved all compensation-related disputes.
As a result of the disputes, the two nations downgraded their economic standing with one another, and Seoul's previous liberal administration threatened to scuttle a bilateral agreement to share military intelligence. Their tense relationship hindered American efforts to forge a stronger regional alliance to effectively handle the situation.
After Yoon's conservative government in March unveiled a divisive plan to use local corporate funds to recompense the victims of forced labor without seeking donations from Japan, bilateral relations warmed. Later that month, Yoon visited Tokyo to meet with Kishida, and the two decided to restart official meetings and additional discussions. Since then, their governments have moved to end their economic retaliation.
Kishida's visit to Seoul attracted a lot of media interest in South Korea, and many people are still bitter about Japan's colonial rule.
In an apparent desire to keep the momentum for better relations going, Kishida avoided making a new, direct apology for the colonization in a news conference held following the summit on Sunday.
After Yoon's conservative government in March unveiled a divisive plan to use local corporate funds to recompense the victims of forced labor without seeking donations from Japan, bilateral relations warmed. Later that month, Yoon visited Tokyo to meet with Kishida, and the two decided to restart official meetings and additional discussions. Since then, their governments have moved to end their economic retaliation.
Kishida's visit to Seoul attracted a lot of media interest in South Korea, and many people are still bitter about Japan's colonial rule.
In an apparent desire to keep the momentum for better relations going, Kishida avoided making a new, direct apology for the colonization in a news conference held following the summit on Sunday.
"As I consider the great difficulty and sorrow that many people had to experience under the harsh environment in those days, I personally have strong pain in my heart," he remarked.
In addition, Kishida disclosed that Yoon and he would visit the Korean Atomic Bomb Victims Memorial in Hiroshima during the G-7 meetings to offer their respects. He said Tokyo would permit South Korean experts to visit and inspect a planned release of treated radioactive water from the damaged Fukushima nuclear power plant in response to South Korea's concerns about the safety of its food in the wake of Japan's nuclear disaster in 2011.
The South Korean inspection team will be made up of professionals from relevant government agencies and organizations, according to Seoul's Foreign Ministry, and negotiations with Japanese officials will shortly take place.
Yoon was criticized at home for making anticipatory concessions to Tokyo without receiving anything in return, and some journalists and opposition lawmakers referred to the summit as a letdown.
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