South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida have begun their second summit in recent days, and the first in Seoul between two top representatives of both governments in a decade, with cooperation on global issues and security concerns raised by North Korea as fundamental issues to be discussed.
The president of South Korea opened the meeting this Sunday by expressing to the Japanese prime minister his hope that this new meeting will result in benefits for both countries.
“We have to move away from the perception that we cannot take a single step towards future cooperation unless our past history is fully resolved”Kisida replied for his part, at the beginning of their meeting.
Both seek to strengthen commercial and military cooperation with the USeven while being aware of the importance of maintaining stable ties with its largest trading partner, China, Bloomberg analysts say.
It’s a delicate balance as Washington and Beijing are locked on a wide variety of issues, from the supply of chips and cutting-edge technology, to the downing of an alleged Chinese spy balloon over American skies to China’s partnership with the Russian president. Vladimir Putin.
Also at the forefront is an increasingly belligerent North Korea, which fired an intercontinental ballistic missile designed to attack the US just hours before Kishida and Yoon held their first summit in Tokyo in March.
Ties between the neighbors began to heat up earlier this year after Yoon proposed a resolution to the long-running dispute over compensation for Japan’s use of Korean forced labor during its 1910-1945 occupation of the peninsula.
His proposalthat involves South Korean companies contributing to a compensation fund for conscripted Korean workers, has not gone down well with the majority of the local public.
The payments were intended to avoid forcing Japanese companies to provide compensation — according to Tokyo’s argument, all of those claims were settled under a 1965 agreement. The Biden administration welcomed the move, calling it as an “innovative” arrangement.
Following the move, South Korea reinstated Japan to its list of preferred trading partners in April. Days later, Japan’s Ministry of Commerce began polling public views on restoring South Korea to Tokyo’s list of preferred trading partners, in a first step that would streamline export processes to South Korea.
Before his summit with Yoon, Kishida and his wife, Yuko Kishida, visited the national cemetery in Seoul, where they burned incense and paid homage in silence before a monument. Most of the deceased remembered or entombed at the cemetery died in the Korean War, although there are also Korean independence fighters from the Japanese regime era. Kishida was the first Japanese leader to visit the site in 12 years.
Kishida later reviewed a South Korean honor guard with Yoon at an official welcoming ceremony at the South Korean presidential office.
(with information from EP and AP)
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Source-www.infobae.com