SEOUL: South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol will visit Japan next week, his office said on Thursday, as the two neighbours try to ease diplomatic strains over Japan’s wartime atrocities during its 35-year colonial rule.
The visit — the first by a South Korean leader in four years — comes after Seoul announced plans on Monday to compensate Korean victims of Japan’s wartime forced labour without direct involvement of Tokyo. However, the agreement has drawn strong protests from victims’ groups in Korea.
Yoon will visit Japan on March 16 and 17 for a summit with Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, the presidential office said, adding that the trip came at Tokyo’s invitation.
“This visit will resume bilateral summit exchanges between South Korea and Japan, which had been suspended for 12 years, and will mark an important milestone in the improvement and development of South Korea-Japan relations,” it added.
It expressed hopes that Yoon’s visit will serve as an opportunity for the two countries to “overcome the unfortunate history of the past” and boost cooperation.
The Korean peninsula was under Japan’s brutal colonial rule from 1910-45, during which around 780,000 Koreans were conscripted into forced labour, according to data from Seoul.
Other atrocities included forcibly recruiting tens of thousands of Korean women as wartime sex slaves, euphemistically known as “comfort women”.
The three-decade-plus period also saw an attempt to erase Korean culture, with Koreans banned from using their own language in schools and forced to adopt Japanese names.
Japan says colonial-era disputes were settled in 1965, when diplomatic ties were normalised and Tokyo gave Seoul some $800 million in loans and economic aid.
Seoul’s new compensation plan has incited outrage from South Koreans, including those who were forced to work for Japanese companies during World War II, but it drew quick praise from Tokyo and Washington.
Seoul and Tokyo — both US allies — have ramped up security cooperation in the face of growing threats from nuclear-armed North Korea.
Japanese government spokesman Hirokazu Matsuno said the two countries have held close exchanges and communication since Yoon took office, describing South Korea as “an important neighbour”.
“With this visit, we wish to further enhance Japan-South Korea relations, based on the friendship and cooperation that has been ongoing since the normalisation of ties,” he told reporters.
The last time a South Korean president visited Japan was in 2019 when Moon Jae-in attended a G20 summit in Osaka. At the time, meetings between the leaders of the two countries were curtailed due to rising tensions stoked by troubles related to their shared history.
