The leaders of Japan and South Korea pledged on Friday to work on new cooperation, including on immigration procedures and the evacuation of citizens in emergencies, at a summit that marked a period of warming bilateral ties fuelled by their personal relationship.
Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida arrived in Seoul earlier in the day for a farewell meeting with South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol. Kishida will leave his post as prime minister in early October after the election of the new leader of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party later this month.
Over the past two years, we have done our best with a reliable partner like President Yoon, who has a strong desire to strengthen bilateral relations, and we feel that we have turned a new page in Japan-South Korea relations. Both Japan and South Korea should continue this progress in the future.
Yoon also stressed the need to continue efforts to improve relations.
“It is important to continue the positive momentum of bilateral cooperation that Prime Minister Kishida and I have built,” Yoon said, according to a statement from his office. Next year will mark the 60th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic ties between Seoul and Tokyo, and Yoon said he hoped to take the relationship to a “new level” in 2025.
Kishida and Yoon agreed to start studying in detail ways to facilitate immigration procedures. They also reaffirmed that Japan and South Korea will work together to evacuate their citizens in case of emergencies in third countries.
They also discussed security issues related to North Korea and said they would continue to work with their common ally, the United States, on Pyongyang and Russia.
This is the prime minister’s second visit to South Korea for a bilateral summit with Yoon during his tenure. In May last year, Kishida became the first Japanese prime minister to attend a bilateral summit in South Korea in 12 years.
Kishida announced in August that he would not run for another term in the LDP leadership race.
The importance of Japan-South Korea relations will remain unchanged in the future,” Kishida said, adding, “I will do my best to make Japan-South Korea relations more solid and broad-based no matter what position I assume”.
The US factor in bilateral relations
Kishida and Yoon have joined forces to bring the two historically rival countries closer together, with the support and encouragement of the United States.
The conservative Yoon took office in May 2022, less than a year after Kishida’s inauguration nearly three years ago, and has called for a “future-oriented” rebuilding of the long-divided bilateral relationship with Japan.
Analysts say cooperation between the two East Asian countries will continue after Kishida’s departure.
“While Prime Minister Kishida deserves credit for breaking the ice with Seoul, I don’t see the continuation of Japan-South Korea cooperation as dependent on his presence,” Rob York, director of regional affairs at the Hawaii-based Pacific Forum think-tank, told Nikkei Asia.
“The current government in Seoul has devoted much of its agenda to enhancing its diplomatic standing within the US-led order, and the US will continue to encourage this cooperation,” York said.
The two leaders held their first summit when Yoon travelled to Tokyo in March 2023. Before travelling to Japan as the first South Korean president to attend a bilateral summit in 12 years, Yoon announced a plan to pave the way for a new beginning between the two Asian countries and staunch US allies.
At the heart of this vision was the creation of a fund, with donations from private companies, to compensate South Koreans who were forced to work for Japanese companies during the Second World War. The issue of financial compensation for the workers has long been a source of tension between Seoul and Tokyo, with the workers, their descendants and some civil society groups insisting on a formal payment by the Japanese government.
Tokyo, on the other hand, insisted that such wartime and colonial-era issues were settled in a 1965 agreement under which Japan provided financial aid and the two sides established formal diplomatic relations. Japan ruled the Korean peninsula from 1910 until its defeat in World War II in 1945.
Yoon’s plan drew criticism from the country’s left-wing opposition and civil society groups, but the two sides continued to increase trade and security cooperation in the months that followed. Seoul and Tokyo lifted trade restrictions imposed because of historical disputes between them.
In August last year, Kishida and Yoon hosted a summit with US President Joe Biden near Washington, which resulted in the three countries deciding to work together.
In a joint statement, they pledged to ‘operationalise’ the real-time exchange of missile warning data.
Washington, which welcomes the ‘friendship’ between Seoul and Tokyo, sees the two countries and their reconciliation as critical to its military and security strategy of containing China’s influence in the region, and is working hard to promote this unity.
