TOKYO — Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi will host South Korean President Lee Jae Myung in her hometown on Tuesday, in a summit meant to stabilize ties between the 2 sometime-rivals as Japan’s worries about Chinese language energy in Asia grows.
The assembly is a part of a swirl of diplomatic exercise in a area with rising tensions. Per week in the past Lee visited China, the place chief Xi Jinping sought to cozy as much as Seoul amid tensions between Japan and China after Takaichi stated in November that potential Chinese language army motion in opposition to Taiwan, the island democracy Beijing claims as its personal, may justify Japanese intervention.
Lee’s go to additionally follows the seize of Venezuelan chief Nicolas Maduro by the USA, a mutual ally of Japan and South Korea.
Takaichi and Lee will meet in her hometown of Nara, Japan’s scenic historical capital.
The talks can be their first full summit and third assembly in lower than three months since Takaichi took workplace, Japanese Overseas Ministry officers stated.
At their talks on the sidelines of the APEC summit in Gyeongju, South Korea, in October, Lee reportedly requested Takaichi to fulfill in Nara.
Their assembly will give attention to commerce and the challenges of China and North Korea.
Japan and South Korea should additionally determine the best way to take care of Trump’s unpredictable diplomacy, and each nations are beneath U.S. strain to extend their defense spending.
Throughout Lee’s conferences in China, Xi referred to as on the 2 nations to hitch fingers, noting their historic rivalry in opposition to Japan in World Struggle II. Lee is predicted to take care of a impartial place between Japan and China.
“Given the present strategic setting, strengthening Japan-South Korea relations and reinforcing the Japan-U.S.-South Korea cooperation is extra essential than ever,” Overseas Minister Toshimitsu Motegi advised reporters on Friday. “The Japanese and South Korean governments are on the identical web page about carefully speaking to develop our relationships stably and in a forward-looking method.”
Takaichi and Lee on Wednesday will go to Horyu Temple, which incorporates structure from the late seventh or early eighth century, making them a few of the world’s oldest surviving picket buildings and illustrating Japanese adaptation of Buddhism by way of the Korean Peninsula. Lee will even meet with South Korean residents in Japan earlier than returning dwelling within the afternoon.
Japan’s cultural, non secular and political ties to the Korean Peninsula are historical, however their trendy historical past has been repeatedly disrupted by disputes stemming from the brutal Japanese colonial rule of Korea in 1910-1945.
Below a 1965 normalization treaty, Japan offered $500 million in financial help to South Korea, saying all wartime compensation points had been settled. However historical issues together with compelled labor and sexual slavery in the course of the battle have disrupted ties for many years as Tokyo promoted revisionist views.
Relations have begun improving in recent times beneath a mutual sense of risk from China’s rising assertiveness.
Takaichi’s repute as a safety hawk and an assumption by some that Lee would tilt towards North Korea and China led to early worries over their ties. However each leaders have to this point sought to enhance their relationship.
Takaichi was a daily customer at Tokyo’s Yasukuni Shrine, which honors Japan’s 2.5 million battle useless, together with convicted battle criminals — an motion seen by the Koreas and China as a scarcity of regret about Japan’s wartime previous. However she despatched a non secular decoration as a substitute of praying at Yasukuni for the Aug. 15 anniversary of Japan’s defeat and the shrine’s autumn competition.
Whereas the 2 leaders are anticipated to steer clear of the historic disputes, media reviews say they could talk about potential humanitarian cooperation within the ongoing effort to recuperate the stays at a former undersea mining site in western Japan the place 180 staff, together with 136 Korean compelled laborers, had been killed in a 1942 accident.
Chief Cupboard Secretary Minoru Kihara stated the 2 governments have been discussing a potential DNA evaluation of a few of the stays discovered on the web site final 12 months.
