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Korean business leaders meet Japanese prime minister amid Line dispute
Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, front row center, poses with Kim Yoon, front row left, chairman of the Korea-Japan Economic Association, his Japanese counterpart Mikio Sasaki, front row right, and Korean business delegation members including Shinhan Financial Group Chairman Jin Ok-dong, back row right, at the prime minister's official residence in Tokyo, Monday. EPA-Yonhap
By Park Jae-hyuk
A group of Korean business leaders met with Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida in Tokyo, Monday, to discuss bilateral economic cooperation between the two countries amid the intensifying political dispute over Naver’s possible divestment from Line, an instant messaging app.
The Korea-Japan Economic Association (KJE) said that the business delegation paid courtesy visits to Japan’s high-ranking government officials, a day before the opening ceremony of the annual Korea-Japan Business Conference.
Samyang Holdings Chairman Kim Yoon, who leads the association, met with Kishida, along with Hyosung Group Chairman Cho Hyun-joon, who is head of the Korea International Trade Association’s Korea-Japan Special Exchange Committee, and Shinhan Financial Group Chairman Jin Ok-dong, who previously worked in Japan for about two decades.
The business delegation also met with Japan’s Minister of Economy, Trade and Industry Ken Saito and Minister of Foreign Affairs Yoko Kamikawa.
It remains uncertain whether they talked about the Japanese government’s apparent attempt to exclude the Korean IT firm from joint management of Line with SoftBank.
In March, Japan asked LY Corp., the messenger app’s Tokyo-headquartered operator, to reconsider its financial reliance on Naver, in response to a massive leak of the personal information of Line users last November due to Naver’s cloud server. Following the request, Naver and SoftBank started negotiations about the former’s sale of its stake in LY Corp.’s holding firm to the latter.
SK Group Chairman Chey Tae-won, who leads Korea’s largest business lobby, the Korea Chamber of Commerce and Industry (KCCI), was absent from the Korean business delegation’s meeting with the Japanese prime minister, although he plans to deliver a keynote speech during the conference’s opening ceremony.
The conference’s plenary sessions will take place between Tuesday and Wednesday, under the theme of the bilateral partnership between Korea and Japan for the future.
“Ahead of the 60th anniversary of the normalization of diplomatic ties between Korea and Japan in 1965, business leaders of both countries will seek ways to boost their bilateral partnership,” the KJE said in a press release.
The participants of the event will include the KJE and the KCCI chairmen, as well as Japan-Korea Economic Association Chairman Mikio Sasaki and around 300 businesspeople from the two countries.
The conference has been held every year since the first in 1969, with Korea and Japan taking turns hosting, without any suspensions despite the COVID-19 pandemic and worsening diplomatic relations under the previous Moon Jae-in administration.