South Korean President Park Geun-hye and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe agreed Monday to speed up talks on Japan’s wartime sex slavery of Korean women to reach an agreement on the issue at an earliest possible date, Park’s office said.
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While Abe has offered apologies, moves to gloss over and erase mentions of comfort women in Japanese history textbooks since he took power have kept the issue highly charged. They spent about one hour and 45 minutes at the restaurant, the same length of time as the Abe-Park meeting.
However, he said, Ms. Parks call upon all parties to face up to history suggested that Seouls quarrels with Tokyo over World War II, including the issues of Korean comfort women and Japans colonial past, remain deeply entrenched. “This is so that we can build our cooperation in a future-oriented manner”.
“It’s the 50th anniversary of the normalization of (Japan-South Korea) ties this year”.
China agreed to send two pandas – a token of significant diplomatic goodwill – to South Korea, to be housed in Samsung’s Everland amusement park complex. The Japanese prime minister, however, stopped short of offering a new apology for Tokyo’s wartime past.
That fund was closed in 2007.
Jitsuo Tsuchiyama, Professor of global Security at Aoyama Gakuin University, said: “The historical recognition or perception of this understanding between the two (countries) is quite different”. It takes time but we must walk together to have a better relation between the two societies.
The Asian neighbors have struggled to find common ground over Japan’s 1910-1945 colonization of Korea, particularly the issue of “comfort women”, as the women, many Korean, are euphemistically known in Japan.
In contrast, South Korea’s trade with China rose to 21 percent of its total past year from just 4 percent in 1992, when they normalized ties.
With Asia in rapid flux, Japan and South Korea must look to the future.
The Korea Herald said all the “positive elements” of the summit did not guarantee the trio’s commitment to the spirit of cooperation reflected in a joint statement issued after the meeting.
“The three key countries dealing with North Korea are the US, China and South Korea”. About 28,500 of them are in South Korea.
North Korea accuses United States of plotting with regional allies to topple its government. There are also plans for a wealth of trilateral meetings to advance economic ties and market integration in specific areas, including the Trilateral ICT Ministers’ Meeting, Trilateral Ministerial Conference on Transport and Logistics, Tripartite Customs Heads’ Meeting, and the Trilateral Ministerial Meeting on Science and Technology Cooperation.
The joint statement Sunday said the three leaders would push to resume “meaningful” North Korean nuclear disarmament talks at an early date and reaffirmed their opposition to the development of nuclear weapons on the Korean Peninsula.
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Chinese Premier Li Keqiang delivers a speech during a meeting with business leaders before a luncheon hosted by South Korean economic organizations in Seoul, South Korea, Sunday, November 1, 2015.
