The leaders of South Korea and Japan are meeting for their second summit in less than two months, as they push to mend long-running historical grievances and boost ties in the face of North Korea’s nuclear program and other regional challenges.
The Japanese prime minister, Fumio Kishida, arrived in South Korea on Sunday for a two-day visit, which reciprocates a mid-March trip to Tokyo by South Korea’s president, Yoon Suk-yeol. The exchange of visits between the leaders of the Asian neighbours is the first of its kind in 12 years.
“I hope to have an open-hearted exchange of views with President Yoon based on our relationship of trust,” Kishida said before his departure to Seoul. “Since March, there have been various levels of communication in areas including finance and defence, and I plan to further develop this ongoing trend.”
South Korean and Japanese officials said Yoon and Kishida would discuss North Korea’s nuclear programme, South Korean-Japanese economic security and overall relations, and other unspecified international issues.
In their summit in March, Yoon and Kishida agreed to resume leadership-level visits and other talks. In recent weeks, the two countries have withdrawn the economic retaliatory steps they had earlier taken against each other in previous years when their history row rekindled.
Ties between Seoul and Tokyo have suffered on-again, off-again setbacks over issues stemming from Japan’s 1910-45 colonial rule of the Korean Peninsula.
The most recent sticking point in their ties was 2018 court rulings in South Korea that ordered two Japanese companies to financially compensate some of their ageing former Korean employees for colonial-era forced labor. The verdicts angered Japan, which has argued that all compensation issues were already settled when the two countries normalised ties in 1965.
In an escalation of tensions, the two countries later downgraded each other’s trade status, while Seoul also threatened to scrap a military intelligence sharing pact. Some activists and residents in South Korea staged campaigns to boycott Japanese products, as well.
The strained South Korea-Japan ties complicated US efforts to build a stronger regional alliance to better cope with rising Chinese influence and North Korean nuclear threats.
In March, however, Yoon’s conservative government took a major step towards mending the ties by announcing it would use local funds to compensate the forced labour victims without demanding contributions from Japanese companies. Later in March, Yoon travelled to Tokyo to meet with Kishida.
Yoon’s push drew strong backlash from some of the forced labour victims and his liberal rivals at home, who have demanded direct compensation from the Japanese companies. Yoon has defended his decision, saying greater cooperation with Japan is required to tackle a set of challenges such as North Korea’s advancing nuclear programme, the intensifying US-China strategic rivalry and global supply chain problems.
In late April, Yoon made a state visit to the United States and agreed with President Joe Biden to reinforce deterrence capabilities against North Korea’s nuclear threats. During a joint news conference, Biden thanked Yoon “for your political courage and personal commitment to diplomacy with Japan”.
Yoon, Biden and Kishida are expected to hold a trilateral meeting later this month on the sidelines of the Group of Seven meetings in Hiroshima to discuss North Korea, China’s assertiveness and Russia’s war on Ukraine. Yoon was invited as one of eight outreach nations.