SEOUL/TOKYO (Reuters) – South Korean President Moon Jae-in and Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga, who have yet to hold a summit since Suga took office in September, will meet in person on Tuesday to discuss a row over wartime history and Japan’s export controls.
The leaders will meet on the sidelines of a three-way summit with Chinese Premier Li Keqiang in the southwestern Japanese city of Fukuoka, a South Korean presidential official said on Sunday.
Bilateral ties between Japan and South Korea have been strained recently over the issue of South Korean forced labour during Japan’s 1910-1945 colonial rule of the Korean peninsula.
The row has escalated after Japan imposed export controls this summer on materials needed to make semiconductors and display screens used in smartphones and other hi-tech products, in a move that Seoul denounced as economic retaliation.
South Korea’s Moon has called for Japan to rescind the export curbs, which Tokyo has said are a national security measure to prevent sensitive technology from being used for military purposes.
The two leaders are likely to discuss the compensation issue for South Korean victims of forced labour during World War Two. The issue resurfaced in 2018 after South Korea’s Supreme Court ordered Japanese companies to compensate some victims, a ruling that Japan says contradicts a 1965 treaty that normalised bilateral ties.
South Korea’s presidential official said Moon and Suga will “sincerely” discuss the issues concerning the two countries during their meeting on Tuesday.
The three-way summit among South Korea, Japan and China, originally scheduled for December, will take place on May 9, the presidential official said.
Chinese Premier Li last met with Moon and Suga in December 2019 in Chengdu, China.
Reporting by Hyonhee Shin and Kiyoshi Takenaka; Editing by Kenneth Maxwell
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