S. Korean Pres. Moon Unlikely to Visit Japan This Year

October 18, 2018

Tokyo- The Japanese government has decided not to make arrangements for a visit by South Korean President Moon Jae-in to Japan at least until next year, government sources said Wednesday.

The government had been asking Moon to visit Japan within this year, in line with the 20th anniversary this month of the 1998 joint declaration between the two neighbors that called for developing future-oriented bilateral relations.

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe made the request directly when he met with Moon in New York last month.

But Tokyo now finds it difficult to realize the proposed visit at an early date, due to lingering bilateral tensions over the issues of "comfort women," mostly from the Korean Peninsula, who were forced to serve Japanese soldiers sexually before and during World War II, and the Japanese Maritime Self-Defense Force's rising sun flag, which has the same design with that of the now-defunct Imperial Japanese military, the sources said.

During the New York meeting with Abe, Moon suggested a plan to dissolve a South Korean organization set up under the December 2015 bilateral accord to resolve the comfort women issue "finally and irreversibly."

Meanwhile, Japan declined to send an MSDF vessel to an international fleet review in South Korea earlier this month, following a South Korean request for the MSDF not to display the rising sun flag during the event.

At a press conference on Wednesday, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga said that no specific schedule for Moon's visit has been decided. Jiji Press