In his strongest comments yet on a growing trade dispute, South Korean President Moon Jae-in yesterday urged Japan to lift recently tightened controls on high-tech exports to South Korea, which he said threaten to shatter the countries’ economic cooperation and could damage Japan more than South Korea.
The dispute has further soured relations already troubled over Japan’s colonial rule of the then-unified Korea before the end of World War II.
Moon accused Japan of abusing its leverage in trade to punish South Korea over their historical dispute.
South Korea sees the trade curbs as retaliation for South Korean court rulings earlier this year that ordered Japanese corporations to compensate South Korean victims for forced labor during World War II.
South Korea says the strengthened export controls of photoresists and other sensitive materials used mainly to manufacture semiconductors and display screens could hurt its export-dependent economy and disrupt global supply chains.
Its government plans to file a complaint with the WTO and raise the issue at next week’s WTO General Council in Geneva, Switzerland.
Trade officials from the two countries failed to resolve the dispute in a working-level meeting in Tokyo on Friday.
Moon also said that South Korea would use the dispute as an opportunity to reduce its dependence on Japan by strengthening its technology industry and diversifying import sources.
“Japan’s export restrictions have broken the framework of economic cooperation between South Korea and Japan that had continued over a half-century based on mutual dependence,” Moon said in a meeting of senior aides at the Blue House in Seoul.
“The shattered credibility of cooperation with Japan in the manufacturing industry will inspire our companies to break out of their dependence on Japanese materials, components and equipment and work toward diversifying import sources or localizing the technologies. I warn that, eventually, it will be the Japanese economy that will be damaged more,” he said.
Moon spoke hours after dozens of South Korean small-business owners rallied in Seoul, calling for boycotts of Japanese consumer goods.
The Japanese measures, which went into effect earlier this month, have stoked public anger in South Korea, where many say that Japan still has not fully acknowledged responsibility for atrocities committed during its colonial occupation of Korea from 1910 to 1945.
Korea Mart Association president Kim Sung-min urged shop owners to boycott the distribution of Japanese products until Tokyo apologizes over the trade curbs and withdraws them.
Other demonstrators held up placards that read: “Our supermarket does not sell Japanese products.”
“We will continue boycotting the consumption and distribution of Japanese products until Japan’s government and the Abe administration apologizes and withdraws its economic retaliation,” Kim said, referring to Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.
Tokyo says the materials affected by the export controls can be sent only to trustworthy trading partners.
Abe and his aides suggested that there might have been illegal transfers of sensitive materials from South Korea to North Korea.
CONFRONTATION: The water cannon attack was the second this month on the Philippine supply boat ‘Unaizah May 4,’ after an incident on March 5 The China Coast Guard yesterday morning blocked a Philippine supply vessel and damaged it with water cannons near a reef off the Southeast Asian country, the Philippines said. The Philippine military released video of what it said was a nearly hour-long attack off the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) in the contested South China Sea, where Chinese ships have unleashed water cannons and collided with Philippine vessels in similar standoffs in the past few months. The China Coast Guard and other vessels “once again harassed, blocked, deployed water cannons, and executed dangerous maneuvers” against a routine rotation and resupply mission to
GLOBAL COMBAT AIR PROGRAM: The potential purchasers would be limited to the 15 nations with which Tokyo has signed defense partnership and equipment transfer deals Japan’s Cabinet yesterday approved a plan to sell future next-generation fighter jets that it is developing with the UK and Italy to other nations, in the latest move away from the country’s post-World War II pacifist principles. The contentious decision to allow international arms sales is expected to help secure Japan’s role in the joint fighter jet project, and is part of a move to build up the Japanese arms industry and bolster its role in global security. The Cabinet also endorsed a revision to Japan’s arms equipment and technology transfer guidelines to allow coproduced lethal weapons to be sold to nations
Thousands of devotees, some in a state of trance, gathered at a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Bangkok renowned for sacred tattoos known as Sak Yant, paying their respects to a revered monk who mastered the practice and seeking purification. The gathering at Wat Bang Phra Buddhist temple is part of a Thai Wai Khru ritual in which devotees pay homage to Luang Phor Pern, the temple’s formal abbot, who died in 2002. He had a reputation for refining and popularizing the temple’s Sak Yant tattoo style. The idea that tattoos confer magical powers has existed in many parts of Asia
ON ALERT: A Russian cruise missile crossed into Polish airspace for about 40 seconds, the Polish military said, adding that it is constantly monitoring the war to protect its airspace Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, and the western region of Lviv early yesterday came under a “massive” Russian air attack, officials said, while a Russian cruise missile breached Polish airspace, the Polish military said. Russia and Ukraine have been engaged in a series of deadly aerial attacks, with yesterday’s strikes coming a day after the Russian military said it had seized the Ukrainian village of Ivanivske, west of Bakhmut. A militant attack on a Moscow concert hall on Friday that killed at least 133 people also became a new flash point between the two archrivals. “Explosions in the capital. Air defense is working. Do not