Parliamentary speaker cancels meeting with Japanese lawmakers
National Assembly Speaker Moon Hee-sang. Korea Times file
South Korea's parliament said Saturday that its speaker has called off a scheduled meeting with Japanese lawmakers during his trip to Tokyo in the latest sign of tensions between the neighbors.
The decision came a day before National Assembly Speaker Moon Hee-sang makes a four-day visit to Tokyo for the parliamentary speakers' meeting of the Group of 20 advanced economies.
On Monday, Moon is set to attend the speakers' gathering before delivering a speech on South Korea-Japan relations at Waseda University the next day.
Moon had planned to meet with Japanese lawmakers on the sidelines of the speakers' meeting to try to resolve strained diplomatic tensions following Tokyo's export curbs against Seoul.
The cancellation came a day after about 150 lawmakers of the two countries failed to find common ground in the diplomatic tensions during their annual meeting in Tokyo.
South Korea and Japan have clashed over Tokyo's export curbs that are seen as political retaliation for last year's Korean Supreme Court rulings that ordered Japanese firms to compensate victims of forced labor during Japan's 1910-45 colonization of the Korean Peninsula. (Yonhap)