TOKYO: Japanese and South Korean leaders will meet in Tokyo this week, hoping to resume regular visits after over a decade and overcome resentments that date back over 100 years. The two major economies of Asia and the United States (US) allies face an increasing need to cooperate on challenges, but previous rounds of talks have foundered on unresolved issues due to Japan’s 35-year occupation of the Korean Peninsula.
South Korea has offered Japan concessions on South Korean court orders for compensation over wartime forced labor, but whether the South Korean public will accept reconciliation remains to be seen.
Japan effectively colonized the Korean Peninsula from 1910 to 1945 in a regime that imposed the Japanese language and names on Koreans and conscripted many into forced labor and forced prostitution in military brothels before and during Second World War. Japan gave $800 million to the military-backed government of South Korea under a 1965 accord to normalize relations, mainly used on economic development projects driven by major South Korean companies.
A semi-government fund established by Tokyo offered compensation to former “comfort women” when the government apologized in 1995, but many South Koreans believed that the government of Japan must take more direct responsibility for the occupation.
Territorial dispute between Japan and South Korea
The two countries also have a longstanding territorial dispute over a group of islands claimed by Japan but controlled by South Korea.
Seoul and Tokyo have tried to establish better relations before. In 2004, leaders started regular visits, but these ended in 2012 after then-South Korean President Lee Myung-bak visited the disputed islands.
Tensions escalated over the past ten years as conservative Japanese governments moved to rearm the country while increasing attempts to whitewash Japan’s wartime brutalities, and in 2018 South Korean Supreme Court ordered Nippon Steel and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries of Japan to compensate forced labor victims. In 2019, in apparent retaliation, Japan placed export controls against South Korea on chemicals used to make semiconductors and displays used in smartphones and other high-tech devices.
Japan’s Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol will hold a summit and have dinner together during Yoon’s March 16 to March 17 visit. Though leaders have met in multilateral sessions, including on the sidelines of a UN meeting in New York in September last year, this is the first formal summit since a meeting in the South Korean capital in 2015.
Kishida is expected to reaffirm Japan’s past remorse over its wartime actions.
Both countries have signaled hopes that this summit will lead to a resumption of regular bilateral visits, although Kishida hasn’t yet announced plans for a visit to South Korea. Tokyo is also considering inviting Yoon to return to Japan as an observer at the Group of Seven summits Kishida will host in Hiroshima in May.
Yoon will be accompanied by high-profile businessmen expected to meet their Japanese counterparts. Chair of the Japan Business Federation, Masakazu Tokura, said the two countries are considering establishing a separate, private fund to promote bilateral economy, culture, and other critical areas of cooperation.
