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| President Moon Jae-in Yonhap |
By Do Je-hae
President Moon Jae-in and new Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga have agreed on continuing efforts to improve bilateral ties amid conflicts over multiple historical issues and trade rows.
Moon and Suga had their first phone talks since Suga stepped into the prime minister role, Sept. 16, according to the presidential office, Thursday.
"The two leaders discussed bilateral relations and the situation on the Korean Peninsula for 20 minutes, at the request of the Korean side," presidential spokesperson Kang Min-seok said in a briefing at Cheong Wa Dae.
"On the occasion of Suga's inauguration, President Moon urged the two countries to accelerate their communication on issues such as forced labor, and Prime Minister Suga said he will encourage dialogue," Kang said. "In particular, President Moon said that the two countries still have different positions on the forced labor issue, but he said he hoped that the two governments will work together to find the best solution that is acceptable for all parties concerned."
Moon called Japan Korea's "closest friend and a partner to cooperate for peace and prosperity of Northeast Asia and the world," while Suga expressed his hope for future-oriented bilateral relations, according to Kang.
They also agreed on the need for closer cooperation for dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic, the presidential office said.
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| Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga Yonhap |
The phone call is the first direct communication between the leaders of the two neighboring countries since Moon met one-on-one with Suga's predecessor Shinzo Abe in Chengdu, China, on the sidelines of the Korea-China-Japan summit in December 2019.
But since then, communication at the top level has been suspended, although Moon has carried out active phone diplomacy with heads of states such as U.S. President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping since the beginning of the pandemic.
The long absence of direct communication between the leaders of Korea and Japan reflects the uneasy bilateral relations due to wide-ranging disputes on their shared history and trade.
Since Suga had not mentioned anything related to Korea during his recent press conference after taking office, there were speculations that the new Japanese leader is not interested in improving relations with Korea. He has also repeatedly said that he will continue Abe's foreign policy, triggering concerns here that Tokyo will retain its rigid position to defy the 2018 Korean Supreme Court ruling which determined that Japanese companies must compensate surviving South Korean victims of wartime forced labor from the 1910-45 Japanese colonial rule of the Korean Peninsula.
Japan has refused to implement the ruling based on the 1965 normalization treaty, under which the country claims that all reparations for colonial issues have already been completely settled with the state-to-state payments attached to the treaty.
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| President Moon Jae-in speaks with his Japanese counterpart at Cheong Wa Dae, Sept. 24. Yonhap |
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