Tokyo, 11 March, /AJMEDIA
Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida on Friday spoke by phone with South Korea’s President-elect Yoon Suk Yeol, amid frosty bilateral ties over wartime history as well as the North Korean missile threat that requires trilateral cooperation with common ally the United States.
Kishida has expressed hope to restore bilateral ties to a “healthy” state and stressed the need for dialogue with the new administration after conservative main opposition candidate Yoon won in a tight presidential race to succeed incumbent Moon Jae In.
Yoon said Thursday he wants to build a “future-oriented” relationship with Japan.
During the current Moon administration, ties between Tokyo and Seoul have sunk to their lowest point in years over issues dating back to Japan’s 1910-1945 colonization of the Korean Peninsula.
Kishida was foreign minister when Japan and South Korea reached an agreement in 2015 to settle “finally and irreversibly” the issue of “comfort women,” or women who worked at Japanese military brothels.
Compensation demands by South Koreans for what they claim as wartime forced labor have also frayed the bilateral relationship as Japan maintains that the compensation issue has been settled based on a 1965 bilateral agreement.
Japan’s recommendation in February of a gold and silver mine complex on Sado Island for the 2023 UNESCO World Heritage list has become another source of friction, drawing a protest from South Korea, which claims that the site is linked to wartime forced Korean labor.
