Leaders of S.Korea, To improve ties Japan agree to strive

In nearly three years on the side-lines of the U.N. General Assembly as they held their countries’ first summit talks on Thursday both governments announced that the leaders of South Korea and Japan agreed to accelerate efforts to mend ties frayed over Japan’s past colonial rule of the Korean Peninsula.

After Tokyo denied Seoul’s earlier announcement that they had agreed on the summit the meeting occurred, in a sign of the delicate nature of their current relations.

On Wednesday in New York during their 30-minute meeting, Yoon’s office said in a statement, to step up talks that South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol and Fumio Kishida, Japanese Prime Minister, shared the need to improve bilateral ties and agreed to instruct their respective diplomats.

Kishida’s office confirmed the meeting. Between the two countries as well as with the United States a separate Japanese Foreign Ministry statement said the two leaders agreed to promote cooperation. To restore sound relations it said the leaders shared the need.

Yoon’s office said the two leaders also jointly expressed serious concerns in certain conditions and the North’s reported moves to conduct its first nuclear test in five years about North Korea’s recent legislation authorizing the preemptive use of nuclear weapons. In their response to North Korea The Japanese Foreign Ministry said Kishida and Yoon agreed to further cooperate.

Yoon and Kishida agreed to continue communications between them Both the South Korean and Japanese governments said. In recent years when the two countries were governed by their predecessors, it wasn’t immediately known how meaningful the two leaders’ conversation in New York was in bilateral ties to address major sticking points that suffered their biggest setback.

In 2018, South Korea’s top court ruled that two Japanese companies named — Nippon Steel and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries — must compensate Koreans who had been forced to work during Japan’s 1910-45 colonial occupation. 

In economic assistance and loans the companies and the Japanese government have dismissed the rulings, arguing that all compensation issues were already settled under a 1965 treaty that normalized bilateral ties and included Tokyo’s provision of hundreds of millions of dollars to Seoul.

To downgrade each other’s trade status the two governments and Seoul threatened to abandon an intelligence-sharing deal the dispute prompted. The Korean former forced laborers and their supporters, for their part, in South Korea pushed for the forced sales of the Japanese companies’ assets.

In efforts to improve bilateral ties it’s unclear if Wednesday’s summit would yield progress since some of the former forced laborers in the court cases maintain the Japanese companies must first consent to the South Korean court rulings if they want to resolve the legal disputes.

Two of its key regional allies where it deploys a total of 80,000 troops, the strained ties have complicated a U.S. push to bolster its trilateral security alliance with Seoul and Tokyo, to better deal with a rising Chinese influence and North Korean nuclear threats.

On the margins of the United Nations General Assembly President Joe Biden met Yoon and Kishida separately on Wednesday.

To address the North Korean threat, in their talks Biden and Yoon reaffirmed their commitment to strengthen their countries’ military alliance and ensure close cooperation.

The importance of advancing a free and open Indo-Pacific Biden and Kishida discussed, emphasizing the importance of strengthening and modernizing their security alliance, according to the White House.

Since Yoon’s inauguration in May South Korea and Japan have been seeking better ties. Between the countries since December 2019 the Yoon-Kishida meeting was the first summit, when then-South Korean President Moon Jae-in and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe met in China on the side-lines of a South Korea-Japan-China summit.

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