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| President Moon Jae-in and Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga / Yonhap |
Foreign ministry says Tokyo canceled Moon-Suga summit
By Kang Seung-woo
The bleak state of relations between Korea and Japan, caused by historical and territorial issues, continued at last week's Group of Seven (G7) Summit in the United Kingdom, as the two heads of state failed to hold an already long-overdue summit.
In addition, Tokyo was reportedly opposed to expanding the G7 so that it might include other countries, including Korea.
In the lead-up to the G7 Summit, there had been speculation that President Moon Jae-in and Japan's Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga would likely have their first in-person talks on the sidelines of the event, or even a trilateral meeting including U.S. President Joe Biden. Suga took office in September of last year.
However, Moon and Suga just exchanged greetings on Saturday (GMT), before the beginning of an expanded session of the summit, according to Cheong Wa Dae, and a Japanese media outlet reported that the two leaders also encountered each other at an evening banquet for a minute, also on Saturday.
On Monday, an official of Korea's foreign ministry revealed that the two countries had provisionally agreed to hold a Moon-Suga meeting during the three-day summit, but that the Japanese side called it off, citing Korea's annual military exercises on and around its easternmost islets of Dokdo, scheduled for this week. Although Korea controls Dokdo, Japan has repeatedly made territorial claims to it.
"From the beginning, we looked forward to Japan's positive response to the planned meeting with an open mind, but we express regret over Tokyo cancelling it due to our annual military drill," the official said.
President Moon also said on his social media accounts that their encounter failed to lead to a summit, although he added that the brief face-to-face meeting was a precious occasion.
However, Suga is still blaming the currently strained bilateral ties on Korea.
According to Japanese media outlets on Monday, the Japanese prime minister had held a press conference after the G7 Summit on the previous day where he said he was in no condition to hold a three-way summit with Korea and the U.S. amid the current situation, in which a state-to-state promise is not being kept.
Claiming that Korea was worsening the situation, Suga also demanded that Moon resolve the issues involving wartime forced labor and sex slavery, over which the two countries have ongoing disputes.
Meanwhile, according to Japan's Nihon Keizai Shimbun newspaper, the Japanese government told U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson that it did not want to expand the G7. Korea, along with Australia, India and South Africa, were invited to the G7 Summit as guest countries.
Japan's opposition to the expansion is seen as an effort to remain Asia's lone G7 member country.
When former U.S. President Donald Trump mentioned a possible G7 expansion to include Korea, last year, the Japanese government made clear its opposition to Korea participating in the group of advanced economies.
In fact, the expansion of the G7 was not discussed during the summit at all, although it is not known whether Japan's voice was an influencing factor.
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