South Korea yesterday summoned the Japanese ambassador and demanded a public apology after a top Japanese official said Washington no longer trusted Seoul in dealings with North Korea.
The foreign ministry asked Ambassador Toshiyuki Takano to issue a public apology and a pledge to prevent a repetition of the remarks by Japanese Vice Foreign Minister Shotaro Yachi.
The office of President Roh Moo-hyun said the comments were impertinent and could further damage strained bilateral ties between the two Northeast Asian neighbors.
The South Korean foreign ministry said in a statement that Yachi's comments could also hurt South Korea-US relations and were "extremely improper."
"Our government makes it clear that the Japanese government must issue a public apology and take due measures to prevent a recurrence," the statement said.
Yachi's comments revealed rifts between the allies as they work to resolve the standoff over North Korea's nuclear weapons drive.
The Japanese official said that South Korea's apparent shift towards the North Korean camp was undermining efforts to resolve the impasse.
Because of Washington's distrust, Tokyo was "cautious about sharing intelligence with Seoul," Yachi was quoted by one of the lawmakers as telling the delegation.
One South Korean newspaper said the comments showed that Washington worried that Seoul could pass on secrets to Pyongyang.
"This tells us how low Korea-US relations have sunk," said the Joong Ang daily.
"The reason is that the United States and Japan are on the right while China and North Korea on the left as South Korea, which used to be in the middle, appears to be moving to the left. This is quite worrisome," Yachi was quoted as saying.
The spat blew up just after the announcement that US President George W. Bush is to meet with President Roh on June 10 at the White House to discuss the nuclear standoff.
Yachi, the number two in Japan's foreign ministry, made the remarks when he met in Tokyo with a five-member delegation from South Korea's National Assembly defense committee on May 11.
"The comments in question must not be condoned for the sake of the future of South Korea-Japan ties and therefore, the government of Japan must take measures against the irresponsible comments by the official," said President Roh's spokesman Kim Man-soo.
Relations between Seoul and Tokyo have been hurt in recent weeks by a territorial dispute over an island in the sea that separates the two countries as well as new Japanese history books that gloss over Tokyo's imperialist past.
Annual visits to a Tokyo shrine that honors Japan's war dead including war criminals by Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi have fanned anti-Japanese sentiment in South Korea and China.
The latest spat comes amid preparations for a summit between Roh and Koizumi scheduled for late June in an effort to patch up relations.
"Especially, it was extremely impertinent for a senior Japanese diplomat to talk about things like the question of confidence between South Korea and the United States in the lead up to a planned South Korea-Japan summit," Roh's spokesman said.
The presidential spokesman said South Korea was not considering plans at this stage to change arrangements for the summit.
"We will first wait and see what Japan does," he said.
The remarks by Yachi made in confidence to South Korean lawmakers were disclosed to the press by Park Jin, an opposition Grand National Party (GNP) lawmaker who attended the meeting.
The GNP attacked the Roh government for "stirring up a diplomatic spat" instead of analyzing its failure to manage its alliance with the US and Japan.
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