PM stays silent over Seoul-Japan relations

Prime Minister Lee Nak-yon, left, shakes hands with a university student before watching “Malmoe: The Secret Mission,” a film portraying independence fighters' activities to protect the Korean language against Japanese suppression by publishing a Korean dictionary during the 1910-45 Japanese occupation, at Yongsan CGV, Seoul, Thursday. / Yonhap

By Park Ji-won

Prime Minister Lee Nak-yon stayed silent Thursday over the strained relations between South Korea and Japan likely implying that the government is maintaining a firm stance against Japan.

Lee declined to comment on the deteriorating relations between Seoul and Tokyo but said, “Keeping silent is a reaction.”

The move is likely to reiterate the government's firm attitude toward Japan to resolve the long history of issues between the two.

President Moon Jae-in recently urged Japan during a New Year's press conference at Cheong Wa Dae to take a “more humble” attitude toward its past asking Tokyo to stop “politicizing” the issue of South Koreans forced to work by Japanese companies during World War II.

The countries' relations have deteriorated further in the wake of the South's court decision. Recently, Seoul and Tokyo have been exchanging barbs against each other over a South Korean warship's radar operations.

Japan claimed that a South Korean warship last week locked its fire-control radar on a Japanese maritime patrol plane while South Korea's defense ministry disputed the claim, stating the destroyer had been on a humanitarian mission to rescue a North Korean ship that was drifting into international waters of the East Sea. The two continue to openly express “regret” over each other's actions.

Meanwhile, Lee had a meeting Thursday with university students after watching megahit movie “Malmoe: The Secret Mission,” which portrays independence fighters' activities to protect the Korean language against Japanese suppression by publishing a Korean dictionary during the 1910-45 Japanese occupation.

When a student from Urimalgakkumi, a university volunteer group to promote the Korean language, asked Lee about the possibility of pushing for publishing the inter-Korean unified dictionary to seek unification, he stressed its necessity to resume talks with the North on the matter as it is important not to separate the Korean languages from either country too much not only to seek unification, but also to preserve the language.