Photo/Illutration Prime Minister Fumio Kishida shakes hands with South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol at the end of their joint news conference on March 16. (Koichi Ueda)

Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and visiting South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol on March 16 agreed on a range of measures to push bilateral relations to a new level.

But one measure being pushed by the South Korean public was not cited by either leader.

“We will open a new chapter in the Japan-South Korea relationship,” Kishida said at a joint news conference after their meeting in Tokyo.

Yoon said the meeting was “a first step to opening a new era of cooperation between South Korea and Japan, having overcome the unhappy past that existed between the two nations.”

The meeting came just 10 days after Seoul announced a plan to set up a foundation that would pay compensation to wartime Korean laborers on behalf of Japanese companies that were ordered by South Korea’s Supreme Court to provide the redress.

At the news conference, both Kishida and Yoon stressed they did not foresee the foundation later asking the Japanese companies to reimburse whatever payments were made.

However, South Korean government officials are hoping for cooperation from Japan to help placate objections raised about the plan to compensate wartime laborers.

Specifically, Seoul wants some action on Japan’s part to back the efforts made through the foundation.

Public opinion polls in South Korea showed about 60 percent of respondents opposed to the plan.

A South Korean reporter at the March 16 news conference pointed out that the South Korean public largely feels that Tokyo is making a smaller effort than Seoul in restoring bilateral relations. The reporter asked Kishida what Japan intended to do.

While not going into specifics, Kishida only said, “I feel that we have produced a number of specific results today, but through further cooperation between our two nations we want to continue producing various results in the future.”

Kishida said earlier at the news conference that agreement had been reached to resume mutual visits by the leaders of the two nations and discussions between bureaucrats regarding national security issues, as well as to set up a new forum on economic security issues.

Yoon said South Korea would restore to a normal condition the sharing of military intelligence under the General Security of Military Information Agreement (GSOMIA).

In August 2019, Seoul informed Tokyo it was planning to scrap the agreement. Although it later backed away from that plan, South Korea never retracted the intention to end the agreement.

In a separate meeting on March 16, business organizations from the two nations agreed to each set up a future partnership fund intended to promote exchanges between the youths of the two nations.

Each government will initially contribute 100 million yen ($750,000), and plans call for later seeking contributions from companies in the two nations.

But the two organizations stressed the fund was intended to foster a future-oriented relationship in an apparent move to distance the measure from the issue of compensation for wartime laborers.

(This article was written by Tamiyuki Kihara, Kiyohide Inada, Shiki Iwasawa and Anri Takahashi.)

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