Tokyo, 30 September, /AJMEDIA/
South Korea said it will continue to cooperate with the Cabinet to be formed by former Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida as Japan’s new leader for improvement of “future-oriented” bilateral ties.
Besides the brief comment from the presidential palace, South Korea’s Yonhap News Agency said Kishida, who served foreign minister from 2012 to 2017, is known in the country for his role in a 2015 agreement struck between the South Korean and Japanese governments.
The deal was to “finally and irreversibly” resolve the issue of former “comfort women” over their treatment in Japanese military brothels.
But the Yonhap report said the agreement on “Tokyo’s sexual enslavement of Korean women during World War II” is now in tatters as the government of President Moon Jae In, who came to power in May 2017, embraced the victims’ claim that the deal was made without full consent from them.
The Korea Herald newspaper said analysts in South Korea are pessimistic on a dramatic shift in strained ties between the neighbors under Kishida, “as he will likely adhere to his predecessor (Yoshihide) Suga and (Shinzo) Abe’s hawkish policy on Seoul.”
The newspaper said that many people in South Korea “believe Japan has not taken adequate responsibility for its colonial atrocities.”
South Korea-Japan relations remain at their lowest level in decades over the comfort women and wartime labor issues.
