South Korea and Japan planned military talks yesterday on accords to share intelligence and provide each other with fuel and medical support, officials said, in what would be their first military agreement since Tokyo’s brutal colonial rule of the Korean Peninsula ended in 1945.
Seoul and Tokyo are important trading and diplomatic partners, but the possibility of such a military treaty is a sensitive topic in South Korea, where many people still harbor strong resentment against Japan’s 35-year occupation. Bilateral ties often suffer over territorial and historical disputes stemming from the colonial legacy.
Yesterday’s talks, however, come as Tokyo and Seoul struggle to deal with a shared worry over North Korean aggression.
South Korean Defense Minister Kim Kwan-jin and his Japanese counterpart, Toshimi Kitazawa, were to have talks yesterday on the military accords, North Korea’s nuclear weapons programs and the artillery attacks, the South Korean Defense Ministry said.
The accords are aimed at strengthening defense cooperation by sharing important intelligence, mostly on North Korea, and assisting each other’s military with fuel and medical supplies during peacekeeping operations abroad, a defense ministry official said.
The official, who requested anonymity citing the issue’s sensitivity, said the accords wouldn’t be signed during yesterday’s one-day talks. It was unclear when the signing could happen.
Ahead of the defense talks, a dozen activists rallied near the Japanese embassy in Seoul, chanting slogans like “We oppose [the accords].”
“How can South Korea-Japan military cooperation be possible without resolving the issue of Japan’s past wrongdoing?” the activists asked in a statement distributed at the protest site.
Last year marked the 100th anniversary of Japan’s annexation of the Korean Peninsula, which ended with Tokyo’s defeat in World War II in 1945. Historians say that hundreds of thousands of Koreans were forced to fight as front-line soldiers, work in slave-labor conditions or serve as prostitutes in brothels operated by the Japanese military.
In August, Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan offered a renewed apology days ahead of the anniversary. South Korean President Lee Myung-bak later said that Seoul and Tokyo should never forget history, but should also work together for a new future.
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