It is positive that South Korea and Japan are moving toward putting their strained ties back on track by holding a series of ministerial-level talks.
Finance and trade ministers of the two countries met on separate occasions Saturday to discuss matters of mutual concern for the first time in more than two years. At this weekend, South Korean Defense Minister Han Min-koo is to hold talks with his Japanese counterpart, Gen Nakatani, on the sidelines of a regional security forum in Singapore. The last Seoul-Tokyo defense chiefs’ meeting took place in January 2011.
It is regretful and unwise for the two neighboring countries to let their disputes over historical and territorial issues block bilateral discussions on practical cooperation in economic and security areas. South Korea and Japan, which commemorates the 50th anniversary of normalizing relations next month, need to strengthen forward-looking efforts that will bring substantial benefits for both sides.
Seoul has recently pursued the strategically wise ― or realistically inevitable ― approach of decoupling historical and territorial discord with Tokyo from economic and security collaboration. In a departure from their previous position, President Park Geun-hye and Foreign Minister Yun Byung-se made no mention of historical issues when they met with a Japanese business delegation earlier this month.
Seoul seems to be more positive about resuming bilateral consultations with Tokyo ahead of Park’s upcoming visit to the U.S., which is pushing to reconcile its two key Asian allies. The increasingly volatile situation in North Korea has also heightened the need to strengthen three-way security cooperation among South Korea, Japan and the U.S.
Aside from this cooperative track, Seoul could and should continue to call on Tokyo to acknowledge and apologize for its pre-1945 wartime atrocities, including the sexual enslavement of Korean and other Asian women for imperial Japanese soldiers. In this regard, Park may not need to avoid holding summit talks with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, whose historical revisionism has increasingly lost ground in the face of mounting criticism by historians around the world.
Caution should still be taken against the possibility of the recent reconciliatory moves being derailed by thorny issues that have newly emerged between the two countries.
Both sides should find a wise solution to the row over Tokyo’s push to win world heritage status for industrial facilities linked to slave labor forced on about 60,000 Koreans during World War II, when the peninsula was under Japan’s colonial rule.
It will damage efforts toward improving bilateral ties if Tokyo pushes ahead with a plan to take Seoul’s ban on importing fishery products from some Japanese prefectures near Fukushima to the World Trade Organization. For its part, Seoul needs to handle the issue from a strictly scientific viewpoint, rather than one based on vague public fears of possible radioactive contamination.
