Yoon to hold summit with Kishida in Japan next week

The Korea Times

The Korea Times

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Sat, September 30, 2023 | 12:14

Politics

Yoon to hold summit with Kishida in Japan next week

Posted : 2023-03-09 18:50

Updated : 2023-03-10 17:16

President Yoon Suk Yeol shakes hands with Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida ahead of their summit in Phonm Penh, Cambodia in November 2022. Newsis

By Lee Hyo-jin

President Yoon Suk Yeol will visit Japan next week for a summit with Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, the Korean presidential office said Thursday. It will be the first visit to Tokyo for a summit by a Korean leader in 12 years.

The presidential office announced that Yoon and first lady Kim Keon Hee will embark on a two-day trip to Tokyo on March 16 at the invitation of the Japanese government. But the exact date of the summit has yet to be fixed, according to the presidential office.

The scheduled meeting is expected to bring about the restoration of shuttle diplomacy, referring to meetings held by the leaders of the neighboring countries once a year.

Shuttle diplomacy came to an abrupt halt in 2011 as bilateral relations became strained due to renewed disputes over history and territory dating back to Imperial Japan's 1910-45 occupation of Korea.

In a written statement, the presidential office expressed hopes that the summit will "serve as a momentum to boost future-oriented bilateral relations in various fields including security, economy, society and culture as well as people-to-people exchanges."

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The announcement came three days after Seoul unveiled a plan to compensate Korean victims of Japan's wartime forced labor through a public fund, without direct payments from responsible Japanese firms.

The arrangement, aimed at improving ties with Japan which slumped to their worst level in recent years, was welcomed by Tokyo which said the move will "help restore healthy bilateral relations."

Yoon's planned visit to Tokyo comes four months after he held a meeting with Kishida in Phonm Penh, Cambodia on the sidelines of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) summit. They also held a one-on-one meeting in New York last September.

While detailed agendas of the summit have yet to be announced, the two leaders are expected to discuss ways to restore ties in economy, trade and defense and set the clock back to before 2019.

That year, the Japanese government initiated export controls on three major industrial materials headed to Korea, which are essential for chips and displays, in an apparent retaliation against the Korean Supreme Court's ruling in 2018 that ordered Japanese companies to compensate Korean forced labor victims.

Japan also removed Korea from its white list of countries given preferential treatment in trade.

The Korean government countered by filing a complaint at the World Trade Organization (WTO) against Japan's sanctions. But just last week, Seoul decided to suspend the lawsuit amid signs of improving relations between the two nations.

The two leaders may also discuss the normalization of an intelligence-sharing pact called the General Security of Military Information Agreement (GSOMIA).

In response to Japan's tightened export controls, the previous Moon Jae-in government had threatened to terminate the agreement with Tokyo. But it conditionally suspended the decision following pressure from the U.S. Trump administration to renew the pact.

"I believe that the Japanese government has made some meaningful announcements on easing export controls," a senior official at the presidential office said in a closed-door briefing, Thursday. "We will make additional updates about GSOMIA following improvements in bilateral relations."

On the same day, Japan's Chief Cabinet Secretary Hirokazu Matsuno said, "Japan and Korea are important neighbors in responding to various challenges of the international community."

Matsuno added, "Since the launch of the Yoon government, the two countries have been holding close talks, including summits between the leaders," confirming Japan's invitation of Yoon and the first lady.

lhj@koreatimes.co.kr