TOKYO (Yonhap) -- A Japanese lower house committee on Wednesday passed a bill on ratifying an agreement on Japan's return of ancient Korean texts to Seoul, in an important step toward the full ratification.
A House of Representatives committee on foreign affairs passed the agreement reached last fall on a majority vote. The main opposition Liberal Democratic Party voiced some disapproval but members of other parties voted for the deal.
Last November, Japan agreed to return a total of 1,205 volumes of archives that were seized during its 1910-45 colonial rule of Korea, including key royal texts known as "Uigwe." The agreement represented Tokyo's first concrete step forward after Prime Minister Naoto Kan in August pledged to return books and other Korean cultural relics as part of his apology for Japan's colonial past.
"I expect the return of these books to South Korea to help build future-oriented Japan-Korea relations and also to stimulate bilateral cultural exchanges," Japanese Foreign Minister Takeaki Matsumoto told the committee.
It is now up to the regular session of the House to ratify the agreement on Thursday. The House of Councilors, the upper house in Tokyo, will have its session on May 13 to discuss the ratification. But if an agreement between Japan and another country is ratified by the lower house, it would go into effect after 30 days regardless of the decision at the upper house.
In May, Matsumoto will visit South Korea and South Korean President Lee Myung-bak will travel to Japan later. Officials in Seoul expect the books to be retrieved sometime next month.
Uigwe is a collection of documents from the Joseon Dynasty (1392-1910). It records and illustrates procedures and formalities conducted for weddings, funerals, banquets and receiving foreign missions as well as cultural activities of the royal family.
Japan is believed to be holding 167 Uigwe books, including 81 originals, at its Imperial Household Agency, after the books were taken away from a Buddhist temple in 1922. South Korea has 3,563 Uigwe books, 703 of them originals. (Yonhap)