South Korean President Moon Jae-in yesterday berated Japan for carrying out its plan to downgrade South Korea’s trade status and reiterated that Tokyo was weaponizing trade to retaliate over political rows stemming from the countries’ wartime history.
Moon said in a Cabinet meeting that Japan is being dishonest by insisting that its trade curbs were not retaliation over historical issues, including South Korean court rulings that called for Japanese companies to offer reparations to aging South Korean plaintiffs for forced labor during World War II.
Japan should look “squarely at the past,” he said, adding that its actions were aggravating the pain and anger of South Koreans who suffered under Japan’s brutal colonial rule of the Korea Peninsula from 1910 to 1945.
“Japan has yet to even state an honest reason for its economic retaliation... No matter what excuse it provides as justification, it is clear that the Japanese government has linked historical issues to economic matters,” Moon said.
Later yesterday, the countries’ diplomats were expected to hold working-level meetings in Seoul to discuss the trade row and security issues related to North Korea.
Tokyo’s moves to tighten controls on exports to South Korea, where major manufacturers like Samsung Electronics Co heavily rely on materials and parts imported from Japan, have touched off a full-blown diplomatic dispute.
Seoul plans to similarly downgrade Japan’s trade status and terminate a bilateral military intelligence-sharing pact with Japan that symbolized the countries’ three-way security cooperation with the US in face of North Korea’s nuclear threat and China’s growing influence.
Following an angry reaction from Washington, Seoul earlier this week said that it could reconsider its decision to end the military agreement, which remains in effect until November, if Japan relists South Korea as a favored trade partner.
Tokyo has justified its trade curbs by raising unspecified security concerns over South Korea’s export controls on sensitive materials that could be used for military purposes and denied Seoul’s accusations that it was retaliating over the history row.
However, Japanese Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga yesterday said that the issue surrounding wartime forced labor was the “biggest problem in bilateral relations.”
Japan has insisted that all compensation matters were settled when the two countries normalized relations under a 1965 treaty and that the South Korean court rulings go against international law.
Tokyo would continue discussions with Seoul over the issue, Suga said, but did not specifically comment on Moon’s remarks.
Moon said that South Korea would employ a variety of measures to minimize the effects of the Japanese trade curbs on its trade-dependent economy.
“We will take this as an opportunity to elevate our economy to a new level by strengthening competitiveness of the manufacturing sector and other industries,” Moon said. “As a sovereign state, we will also resolutely take steps to respond to Japan’s unjust economic retaliation.”
Japan’s downgrading of South Korea’s trade status, which took effect on Wednesday, followed a move last month to strengthen controls on exports of chemicals South Korean companies use to produce computer chips and displays for smartphones and TVs, which are among South Korea’s key export items.
South Korea’s removal from Tokyo’s trade “white list” means that Japanese companies would need to apply for approval for each technology-related contract for South Korean export, rather than the simpler checks granted a preferential trade partner, which is still the status of the US and others.
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