The top diplomats of South Korea and Japan on Sunday tried to narrow differences in the interpretation of shared history ahead of a summit between the leaders of the two sides.
Foreign Minister Yun Byung-se talked for 50 minutes with his Japanese counterpart, Fumio Kishida, in Seoul on the eve of the bilateral meeting between President Park Geun-hye and Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.
“The main purpose (of the Yun-Kishida talks) was to prepare for the South Korea-Japan summit tomorrow,” a South Korean Foreign Ministry official told reporters.
There were discussions on ways for the success of what would be the first one-on-one summit between Park and Abe, he added.
Yun and Kishida agreed on the need for joint efforts to make a “starting point” for the relations between the neighbors, which mark the 50th anniversary this year of the normalization of diplomatic ties, according to the official who spoke on background.
Abe is on a visit here to attend the trilateral summit also involving Chinese Premier Li Keqiang.
Asked about whether the foreign ministers talked about Japan’s wartime sexual enslavement of Korean women, the official said every pending issue was on the table. He would not go into details.
The “comfort women” issue is one of the most important and thorniest agenda items in the Park-Abe talks.
In an interview with Japanese media last week, Park expressed hope that her summit with Abe will serve as a chance for resolving the issue within this year.
She is expected to press Abe directly to offer a clear and sincere apology for the victims of Japan’s crimes against humanity during World War II.
But Japan’s Deputy Cabinet Secretary Koichi Hagiuda said the Abe administration’s position on the matter remains unchanged.
Tokyo claims that it was settled in the 1965 agreement to normalize its diplomatic ties with Seoul. (Yonhap)
