Calls in South Korea for a boycott of Japanese goods in response to Tokyo’s curbs on the export of high-tech material to South Korea picked up yesterday, as a dispute over compensation for forced wartime labor roiled ties between the US allies.
It is the latest flash point in a relationship long overshadowed by South Korean resentment of Japan’s 1910 to 1945 occupation of the Korean Peninsula, in particular South Korean “comfort women,” a Japanese euphemism for women forced to work in Japanese military brothels before and during World War II.
Japan apologized to the women as part of a 2015 deal and provided a ￥1 billion (US$9.3 million at the current exchange rate) fund to help them.
Advocacy groups for the women have criticized the fund and South Korea dissolved it yesterday, despite Japan’s warnings that such action could damage ties.
“This is totally unacceptable for Japan. We’ve made stern representations to the South Korean side,” Japanese Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretary Yasutoshi Nishimura said in Tokyo.
The bitterness over the forced labor issue could disrupt global supplies of memory chips and smartphones.
Japan on Monday said that it would tighten restrictions on the export of high-tech materials used in smartphone displays and chips to South Korea.
The curbs took effect on Thursday, fueling South Korean calls for retaliation.
Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix — the world’s top memorychip makers and suppliers to Apple and China’s Huawei Technologies — could face delays if the curbs drag on.
“A boycott is the most immediate way for citizens to express their anger,” said Choi Gae-yeon of the activist group Movement for One Korea, which staged protests in front of a Japanese automaker’s showroom and a retailer in Seoul this week.
“Many people are angry at the attitude of the Japanese government,” she said.
The row over forced labor exploded last year, when a South Korean court ordered Japan’s Nippon Steel and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries to pay hundreds of thousands of US dollars to South Korean plaintiffs.
Japan has maintained that the issue was fully settled in 1965, when the two countries restored diplomatic ties, and has denounced the ruling as “unthinkable.”
As of yesterday, nearly 27,000 people had signed a petition posted on the South Korean presidential office’s Web site calling for a boycott of Japanese products and for tourists not to visit.
The government must respond to a petition that gets 200,000 signatures in one month.
Some South Korean social media users posted “Boycott Japan” messages and shared a link to a list of Japanese brands that could be targeted, including Toyota and Uniqlo.
Toyota’s South Korean unit declined to comment and Uniqlo parent Fast Retailing’s South Korean unit did not have an immediate comment.
“Japan boycott movement” was among the most searched-for terms on South Korea’s main online search engine, Naver.
A South Korean actor on Thursday deleted photographs he posted on social media of a visit he made to Japan after online criticism.
South Korea last year imported US$54.6 billion of goods from Japan and paid for US$11.5 billion of its services.
South Korea last year exported US$30.5 billion in goods and US$8.7 billion in services to Japan, South Korean customs and central bank data showed.
ROCKY RELATIONS: The figures on residents come as Chinese tourist numbers drop following Beijing’s warnings to avoid traveling to Japan The number of Chinese residents in Japan has continued to rise, even as ties between the two countries have become increasingly fractious, data released on Friday showed. As of the end of December last year, the number of Chinese residents had increased by 6.5 percent from the previous year to 930,428. Chinese people accounted for 22.6 percent of all foreign residents in Japan, making them by far the largest group, Japanese Ministry of Justice data showed. Beijing has criticized Tokyo in increasingly strident terms since Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi last year suggested that a military conflict around Taiwan could
A retired US colonel behind a privately financed rocket launch site in the Dominican Republic sees the project as a response to China’s dominance of the space race in Latin America. Florida-based Launch on Demand is slated to begin building a US$600 million facility in a remote region near the border with Haiti late this year. The project is designed to meet surging demand for the heavy-lift rockets needed to put clusters of satellites into orbit. It is also an answer to China’s growing presence in the region, said CEO Burton Catledge, a former commander of the US Air Force’s 45th Operations
Germany is considering Australia’s Ghost Bat robot fighter as it looks to select a combat drone to modernize its air force, German Minister of Defense Boris Pistorius said yesterday. Germany has said it wants to field hundreds of uncrewed fighter jets by 2029, and would make a decision soon as it considers a range of German, European and US projects developing so-called “collaborative combat aircraft.” Australia has said it will integrate the Ghost Bat, jointly developed by Boeing Australia and the Royal Australian Air Force, into its military after a successful weapons test last year. After inspecting the Ghost Bat in Queensland yesterday,
A pro-Iran hacking group claimed to breach FBI Director Kash Patel’s personal e-mail inbox and posted some of the contents online. The e-mails provided by the hacking group include travel details, correspondence with leasing agents in Washington and global entry, and loyalty account numbers. The e-mail address the hackers claim to have compromised has been previously tied to Patel’s personal details, and the leaked e-mails contain photos of Patel and others, in addition to correspondence with family members and colleagues. “The FBI is aware of malicious actors targeting Director Patel’s personal email information,” the agency said in a statement on
RSS