LEE SAYS TASK OF DEEPENING TIES IS URGENT
Earlier, Lee, who is set to spend two days in Japan, vowed not to intervene in its dispute with China, although the diplomatic stand-off was not desirable for regional peace.
“The current international environment and trade order are unprecedentedly volatile,” he said, speaking alongside Takaichi. “It is an urgent task of our time to deepen bilateral relations.”
Despite a recent thaw, ties between Tokyo and Seoul have been strained by disputes over Japan’s colonial rule of the Korean peninsula, including the treatment of Korean women forced to work in military brothels and labourers conscripted to support Japan’s wartime effort.
Takaichi added that she welcomed progress in efforts to identify human remains discovered at an abandoned coal mine in western Japan, where some 136 Koreans and 47 Japanese died in 1942, when the mine beneath the seabed collapsed and flooded.
South Korea says the remains of as many as 10,000 Korean forced labourers are still in Japan, which says it has identified about 3,000.
The leaders said they would continue their “shuttle diplomacy” effort, with Takaichi expected to travel next to South Korea for their third meeting, without giving a date.
https://www.channelnewsasia.com/east-asia/japan-south-korea-sanae-takaichi-lee-jae-myung-meet-security-economic-ties-5855066
