Foreign ministers of Japan and South Korea reaffirmed the importance of solving a bilateral dispute over wartime labor compensation when they briefly met in Madrid on Sunday evening, a senior Japanese official said.
Toshimitsu Motegi and Kang Kyung Wha held talks for around 10 minutes before dinner in the Spanish capital on the sidelines of a ministerial conference of Asian and European countries, as bilateral tensions remain over the wartime labor issue.
Kang called for the quick withdrawal of the stricter regulations Japan imposed on exports to its Asian neighbor of materials needed to manufacture semiconductors and display panels, according to the South Korean Foreign Ministry.
The two ministers shared expectation for progress on the issue of export controls during a director general-level meeting that started in Tokyo Monday morning, the Japanese Foreign Ministry official said.
(Japanese Foreign Minister Toshimitsu Motegi (R) and his South Korean counterpart Kang Kyung Wha shake hands before their talks in Nagoya, central Japan, on Nov. 23, 2019.)
The brief meeting came after ties between the neighboring countries sank to their lowest point in years over the wartime labor dispute and trade controls.
Relations soured following rulings last year by South Korea's top court ordering Japanese companies to compensate people it found were subject to forced labor during Japan's colonial rule of the Korean Peninsula between 1910 and 1945.
While Japan argues the issue of compensation was settled "finally and completely" by a 1965 bilateral agreement, the court said personal claims are still valid. South Korea's government has refused to step in as doing so would violate the separation of powers.
Moon Hee Sang, the head of South Korea's parliament, has proposed a bill to invite donations from Japanese and South Korean companies and the public to provide funds for compensation.
In Tokyo, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga said Monday Japan conveyed its "unwavering" stance over the issue of wartime labor during the foreign ministers' meeting. Japan has viewed the South Korean court orders as contravening the 1965 bilateral accord.
"We will continue to ask South Korea to deal with the issue in a sensible manner," Suga said at a regular press conference.
On North Korea, Motegi and Kang confirmed their policy of strengthening bilateral as well as trilateral cooperation with the United States.
North Korea has recently been stepping up its provocative rhetoric, warning that it will restart nuclear and intercontinental ballistic missile tests if its talks with Washington fail to achieve a breakthrough by the end of the year, a deadline set by Pyongyang.
Motegi and Kang also confirmed that they will separately lay the groundwork for a meaningful summit between Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and South Korean President Moon Jae In to be held later this month in Chengdu, China.
Abe and Moon are slated to hold their first formal talks in more than a year on the sidelines of a trilateral summit with China, with the focus on whether they can ease tensions that are already taking an economic toll and have threatened to undermine security cooperation in the face of missile threats from North Korea.
The two ministers agreed to prepare for their next meeting in Chengdu when their leaders meet, according to the Japanese Foreign Ministry official.
A formal meeting between the two foreign ministers was initially planned for Monday in Madrid on the fringe of the Asia-Europe meeting, but several Japanese government sources had said official talks were canceled due to scheduling difficulties.
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