Japan, South Korea Ministers Seek Resolution on Wartime Labor

(Bloomberg) -- Top diplomats from Japan and South Korea agreed in New York to continue to seek a resolution on the issue of Korean labor conscripted to work in Japanese factories and mines during World War II.

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Japanese Foreign Minister Yoshimasa Hayashi and South Korean counterpart Park Jin also agreed to cooperate on the security threat posed by North Korea at their meeting on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly, the foreign ministries of the two countries said in statements Tuesday.

Park took office in May under the administration of newly elected conservative President Yoon Suk Yeol, who has been seeking to ease tensions from issues arising from Japan’s 1910-45 colonial rule over the Korean Peninsula. Tensions have come a boil in recent years and caused severe strains between the neighbors who are the US’s major military allies in the region.

The South Korean presidential office said Yoon planned to hold a summit with Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida in New York, where both are expected to address the UN session, but Hayashi told reporters no specific schedule for a summit has been decided yet, Kyodo News said.

Yoon and Kishida met briefly at a NATO summit in June but the last formal summit between the two countries took place in December 2019, when then Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe met Yoon’s predecessor, President Moon Jae-in.

A series of decisions by South Korean courts in recent years finding certain Japanese companies liable for compensation to Korean laborers during the colonial period has soured ties. Japan has said the decisions were unjust and matters of compensation were “settled completely and finally” under a 1965 agreement that normalized relations between the two.

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