South Korea and Japan may exchange visits of government delegations this month to commemorate a key anniversary on their relations, a South Korean diplomat said Thursday.
Lee Sang-deuk, the Foreign Ministry’s director-general of the Northeast Asia affairs bureau, said the two sides will continue consultations over the issue, raising hopes of a breakthrough in efforts to warm their icy ties.
The Northeast Asian neighbors mark the 50th anniversary of the normalization of diplomatic ties on June 22 but remain mired in disputes over shared history. Japan brutally colonized Korea from 1910-45.
“There were discussions about the issue of both nations’ government officials attending events to mark the 50th anniversary,” Lee told reporters. “Nothing has been decided yet. We agreed to continue consultations.”
He was emerging from a meeting with Junichi Ihara, head of the Japanese Foreign Ministry’s Asian and Oceanian Affairs Bureau.
Their talks were intended to address Seoul’s call for Tokyo to offer a sincere apology and formal reparations for its wartime sexual enslavement of Korean women.
With regard to the matter, Lee said, there is no agreement to announce.
“We agree to continue efforts to narrow differences through consultations,” he said.
The “comfort women” issue is one of the biggest obstacles to the Seoul-Tokyo relations.
It has been estimated that more than 200,000 women from Korea, China, Taiwan and some other Asian nations were forced to serve as “comfort women” for the Japanese troops during World War II.
Japan’s Shinzo Abe administration is accused of trying to undermine a 1993 apology by his predecessor over Japan’s atrocity.
Japan also claims that the compensation issue was settled in a 1965 deal on normalizing bilateral diplomatic ties.
South Korea said the Japanese government has yet to admit its legal responsibility and offer appropriate compensation for victims.
Foreign Ministry spokesman Noh Kwang-il said in Seoul, “We are considering participation by an appropriate high-level figure.”
He did not rule out the possibility that Foreign Minister Yun Byung-se will travel to Tokyo but added no specific decision has been made yet.
On the prospects of summit talks between President Park Geun-hye and Abe, he reiterated Seoul’s stance that it is interested only in a meeting to build up “sustainable mutual trust,” not talks for the sake of talks. (Yonhap)
