Calls Growing in Japan to Skip Summit with S. Korea

November 7, 2018

Tokyo--Calls are growing within the Japanese government that the country should not hold a summit with South Korea on the sidelines of a string of international meetings next week.

This is because Seoul has made no major effort to improve the bilateral ties since its Supreme Court on Oct. 30 ordered Nippon Steel & Sumitomo Metal Corp. <5401> to compensate South Koreans for forced labor during World War II, when the Korean Peninsula was under Japan's colonial rule.

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and South Korean President Moon Jae-in are both scheduled to attend gatherings related to the Association of Southeast Asian Nations from Sunday and a summit of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum on Nov. 17.

Abe is planning to hold talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin on the fringe of at least one of the events.

Regarding the possibility of a summit with South Korea, however, a Japanese official indicated that the two nations are "not in a situation to hold top-level talks."

Tokyo has criticized the South Korean ruling as "outrageous." It indicated its readiness to bring the case to the International Court of Justice.

At a press conference Tuesday, Foreign Minister Taro Kono condemned the ruling, saying it has posed "a challenge to the order of international law."

He expressed the view that Seoul is responsible for compensation to South Korean individuals under a 1965 bilateral accord to completely and finally settle the issue of the right to claim war-related and other damages.

So far, Japan has held meetings with South Korea to cooperate mainly in dealing with North Korea, even when Tokyo and Seoul are in dispute.

But the ruling "is fundamentally different" from past problems because it undermines the legal foundation of the postwar bilateral relations, according to a senior Japanese Foreign Ministry official.

The ruling joined the ranks of factors recently straining the bilateral relations, such as a spat over the Maritime Self-Defense Force's flag and the issue of Korean comfort women forced to sexually serve Japanese troops before and during World War II.

Given these, the two countries' ties are unlikely to improve anytime soon, observers said. Jiji Press