Photo/Illutration Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, right, meets with South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol in New York on Sept. 21. (Provided by Cabinet Public Affairs Office)

North Korea’s recent barrage of ballistic missile launches prompted Japan and South Korea to move quickly to arrange a formal summit between their respective leaders.

The growing military provocations drove home the need for closer cooperation between Japan and South Korea, officials in Tokyo said.

One idea gaining traction is for Prime Minister Fumio Kishida to meet with his South Korean counterpart, President Yoon Suk-yeol, while both leaders are in Southeast Asia later this month for a series of international conferences, according to several government sources.

The two men met briefly in September in New York on the sidelines of a U.N. General Assembly session, but it did not constitute a formal summit meeting.

Aside from that, the last time the leaders of the two countries met was in December 2019 when Prime Minister Shinzo Abe held talks with South Korean President Moon Jae-in.

Kishida is planning to visit Cambodia, Indonesia and Thailand between Nov. 11 and 19 to attend a number of conferences, including the Group of 20 summit and the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit meeting.

Discussions being held with South Korean officials are centering on holding a bilateral summit in one of those nations.

North Korea by no means is the only pressing issue on the diplomatic front. The most contentious bilateral issue concerns court rulings in South Korea ordering Japanese companies to compensate wartime Korean laborers. The issue is far from being resolved as Japan contends it settled all outstanding matters when it formalized diplomatic relations with South Korea in 1965.

In light of the fact conservative elements within the ruling Liberal Democratic Party would react badly to any formal summit meeting while the Korean laborer issue remains unsolved, Kishida and Yoon could end up only talking informally on the sidelines of the international conferences.

Yoon now has his hands full dealing with a stampede disaster in the Itaewon district of Seoul that claimed more than 150 lives, so deciding on a meeting date could be difficult.

After the September encounter in New York, diplomats from the two nations at various levels have held numerous meetings, and the Kishida administration has praised Seoul’s efforts to improve bilateral relations.

“The situation is no longer one in which we can continue to say we will not hold a formal meeting unless the laborer issue is settled,” said one close associate of Kishida.

One sign that bilateral relations are on the upswing is the planned participation on Nov. 6 by South Korean naval ships in an international naval fleet review to be hosted by the Maritime Self-Defense Force. South Korean ships will be taking part for the first time in seven years.

LDP Vice President Taro Aso visited Seoul on Nov. 2 and met with Yoon. Aso heads a committee on Japan-South Korea cooperation made up of lawmakers and businesspeople and he was invited to Seoul by the counterpart South Korean committee.

According to the South Korean presidential office, Yoon told Aso that the committees played an important role and hoped it would contribute to furthering private-sector exchanges between the two nations.

Aso told Yoon that further efforts would be made toward a restoration of bilateral relations as soon as possible, prompting a high-ranking Foreign Ministry official to remark, “It is important that dialogue is being conducted at many levels.”

Related News