Lee Min-hyung joined The Korea Times in 2014 and has worked as a journalist mainly in Korea’s finance, tech and automotive industry. He specializes in content creation, breaking news and in-depth analysis currently on transportation and mobility. You can reach him via mhlee@koreatimes.co.kr.
Seoul, Tokyo foreign ministers to discuss thorny issues
By Lee Min-hyung
Korean Foreign Minister Kang Kyung-wha
By Lee Min-hyung
Japanese Foreign Minister Toshimitsu Motegi
Foreign Minister Kang Kyung-wha will be holding talks with her new Japanese counterpart Toshimitsu Motegi for the first time, Friday (KST) during the United Nations General Assembly to discuss issues of mutual interest.
The upcoming meeting is gaining much attention, as the planned encounter will also be Motegi's official debut in diplomacy with South Korea amid the ongoing bilateral political confrontation.
A key question regarding the Kang-Motegi meeting is whether the top Japanese diplomat, who took the role on Sept. 10, will continue the hardline approach of his predecessor Taro Kono in assessing the diplomatic squabble between the neighboring countries.
The South Korean foreign minister will brief the South Korean media in New York, early Saturday (KST) on the outcomes of her meeting with Motegi, a high-ranking diplomatic source familiar with the issue told The Korea Times.
It appears tough for the two ministers to come to a near-term agreement to end the trade-driven spat, which has in recent months escalated into full-fledged economic and political confrontation, as both sides remain poles apart in views over last year's South Korean Supreme Court ruling last year on compensation issues of wartime forced labor during Japan's 1910-45 colonial rule of Korea.
Diplomatic sources said the Kang-Motegi meeting will facilitate an exchange of their starkly different views on pending issues. They said it is too early to expect either side to reach any meaningful settlement to alleviate the dispute.
“Motegi is expected to urge the South Korean government to play a more active role in resolving the wartime compensation issue,” the source said on the condition of anonymity.
Following the South Korean court's ruling, Japan expressed deep regret and has recently taken a series of retaliatory measures against South Korea. In particular, bilateral relations reached their lowest ebb last month when Tokyo announced its decision to remove Seoul from a whitelist of countries receiving preferential trading status.
In response, the South Korean government took a countermeasure by ending the bilateral military information-sharing pact, better known as the General Security of Military Information Agreement (GSOMIA).
“The new Japanese foreign minister will also demand South Korea reconsider extending GSOMIA during the meeting with Kang,” the source said.
The South Korean foreign minister, however, plans to reiterate its previous position on the court ruling by saying the decision was the result of an “independent judicial decision.”
“But they will reach a broad consensus in holding working-level talks to narrow differences over these issues that need to be addressed, properly but thoughtfully,” the source said.
Aside from the political conflict, both ministers will also discuss measures to tighten the trilateral security alliance between Seoul, Tokyo and Washington amid lingering missile and nuclear threats from North Korea, according to the source.
An official from South Korea's Ministry of Foreign Affairs said the authority believes that South Korea and Japan will share their common willingness to resolve the dispute “in a diplomatic manner” during the upcoming ministerial meeting.
“The upcoming meeting is meaningful as this will happen for the first time after the new Japanese foreign minister begins the given role,” the official said. “As of now, it is hard to share a detailed agenda for the upcoming dialogue, but both of them are expected to express their willingness to settle the dispute by holding a series of subsequent director-level or other kinds of working-level talks.”
Motegi recently stepped up criticism of Seoul for “breaching international law,” saying that the ruling overturned the fundamentals of the 1965 treaty between the nations.
He also strongly demanded Seoul “correct its violation of the international law” in no time. But the South Korean government remains of the position that individual sufferers still have the right to legally claim for compensation as the 1965 treaty was a settlement of nation-to-nation claims.
To discuss details over the upcoming foreign ministerial meeting, Seoul and Tokyo held a director-level dialogue last week in Tokyo. But both sides failed to narrow their differences, only finding themselves at odds against each other.