Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe again proposed a summit with South Korean President Park Geun-hye in his latest public appeal to Park on Thursday amid no apparent sign of a breakthrough in the strained relations.
Abe has been pushing to set up a summit with Park to try to repair frayed bilateral relations over historical disputes stemming from Japan's 1910-45 colonial rule of the Korean Peninsula.
Japan and South Korea "should exchange frank dialogue at all levels, including top leaders, without preconditions," Abe said in a message read by Japanese Ambassador to South Korea Koro Bessho at a joint meeting of private bilateral cooperative committees.
Park said in a message read by a South Korean diplomat in the same meeting that Seoul and Tokyo are important partners and issues that need to be addressed are not few, without elaborating.
Still, she did not mention a word on a possible summit with Abe. Park has refused to meet Abe bilaterally, and one of the most knotty issues is Korean sex slaves for Japan's World War II soldiers, commonly called the "comfort women."
Abe's comments are the latest in a series of his conciliatory gestures toward Park in recent months.
Last month, Abe conveyed his offer for a summit to Park through Fukushiro Nukaga, a lawmaker who led a Japanese parliamentary delegation to South Korea.
In September, Abe also sent a personal letter to Park through former Japanese Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori, expressing hope that he will meet with Park on the sidelines of an international conference in the fall.
Park and Abe are set to attend a series of back-to-back regional summits to be held in China, Myanmar and Australia next week, though it remains unclear whether the two could meet on the sidelines of those summits.
Park met with Chinese Premier Li Keqiang and held two separate talks with her Danish and French counterparts on the sidelines of the summit of the Asia-Europe Meeting, known as ASEM, in Italy in October.
Park did not encounter Abe in Italy, in the latest sign that underscored the deep division between the two neighbors over historical disputes.
Seoul-Tokyo relations have plunged into one of their worst levels in recent years largely over the issue of the sex slaves and Japan's repeated territorial claims to South Korea's easternmost islets of Dokdo.
Historians estimate that up to 200,000 Asian women, mostly Koreans, were forced into sexual servitude for Japan's World War II soldiers.
Park has shunned a summit with the Japanese leader, though they met in a trilateral summit with U.S. President Barack Obama on the sidelines of a nuclear security summit in the Netherlands in March. It was the first summit between Seoul and Tokyo in nearly two years. (Yonhap)
