Japan and South Korea strengthen ties and resume “shuttle diplomacy”

The leaders of Japan and South Korea, who met in Tokyo on Thursday to strengthen bilateral ties, agreed to resume mutual diplomatic visits, Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said.

“We agreed to resume shuttle diplomacy, in which the leaders of Japan and South Korea, regardless of format, make frequent visits” to each other’s countries, said Kishida, quoted by the French news agency AFP.

The announcement was made on the sidelines of a meeting between Kishida and South Korean President Yoon Seok-yeol.

Tokyo also announced this Thursday the lifting of restrictions on semiconductor exports to South Korea, imposed in 2019, and Seoul withdrew a complaint on the matter to the World Trade Organization.

Yoon’s two-day visit marks the most important summit between Tokyo and Seoul in 12 years after the two countries fell out over historical disputes.

Yun and Kishida, who only met on the sidelines of international events, are due to hold a joint press conference this Thursday.

North Korea marked the Tokyo summit with the launch of an intercontinental ballistic missile that landed in the Sea of ​​Japan hours before Yun’s arrival in the Japanese capital.

The South Korean president, who Kishida may also invite to the G7 summit in Hiroshima in May, has made rebuilding ties with Tokyo his top priority since being elected a year ago.

“The Japanese government will join us to open a new chapter in Korea-Japan relations,” Yoon said in an interview with various media outlets, including AFP.

The past has taken a toll on bilateral relations, marked by the Japanese colonization of the Korean Peninsula (1910-1945) and, in particular, the issue of Korean “comfort women,” the sex slaves of Japanese soldiers during World War II.

Yong’s election and growing concern over North Korea’s repeated provocations and China’s regional ambitions have raised hopes for a softening of relations between the two neighboring democracies.

“Radical changes are affecting international relations,” Yuki Asaba, professor of Korean studies at Doshisha University in Kyoto, Japan, told AFP.

He added that this “makes more urgent the need to coordinate the actions of the United States, Japan and South Korea” and strengthen their deterrence capabilities.

Professor Park Won Gun of Seoul’s Ewha University told AFP that the summit’s outcome will depend on the extent to which Kishida is “willing to apologize” for Japan’s past crimes.

Tokyo said it stands by its historic 1990s apologies for wartime actions, but many in South Korea see them as insufficient and criticize Yun’s plan to compensate for forced labor.

In early March, the Seoul government approved a plan to compensate South Koreans subjected to forced labor in Japan in the first half of the 20th century, without any direct financial involvement from Tokyo.

The rapprochement between Seoul and Tokyo has been well received internationally, especially in Washington, which wants to reconcile its closest Asian allies.

In January, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg visited Seoul and Tokyo to strengthen cooperation with the two allies in a region considered important to Euro-Atlantic security.