Rival party lawmakers of South Korea meet with Japanese PM Fumio Kishida

SEOUL: Two rival party lawmakers of South Korea met with Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida on Monday and delivered their thoughts on the results of a summit held a day earlier between Kishida and President Yoon Suk Yeol.

The closed-door session comes on the second day of Kishida’s two-day working visit to South Korea, a highly symbolic trip that marks a start for the restoration of bilateral relations long frayed over issues rooted in Japan’s 1910-1945 colonial rule of the Korean Peninsula, Yonhap news agency reported.

Representative Chung Jin-suk from the ruling People Power Party (PPP) and Representative Yun Ho-jung from the main Opposition Democratic Party (DP), both of whom are leaders of the Korea-Japan Parliamentarians’ Union, attended the Monday meeting with Kishida at a hotel in Seoul. At the scene, dozens of police officers were dispatched near the hotel’s front gates, while a mob of reporters and cameras surrounded the lobby inside, waiting for the arrival of Prime Minister Kishida and the Korean delegates.

During the meeting, which lasted around 50 minutes, the two lawmakers delivered their thoughts on the results of Sunday’s summit, where the two leaders pledged to work closely together in all areas of cooperation. The summit also produced an agreement to allow South Korean experts to visit the Fukushima nuclear power plant for safety checks ahead of the planned release of contaminated water from it. During a joint press conference, Kishida also expressed regret over the issue of Japan’s wartime forced labour, which had been the biggest thorn in relations between the two countries, saying his “heart aches” for those who suffered under harsh conditions at the time.

It was the first time Kishida has made such a remark. “It seems like a warm breeze is blowing in Korea-Japan relations just one year after the Yoon Suk Yeol administration was launched. The two leaders’ courage and determination was the power behind the rapid normalisation of the Korea-Japan relations,” Chung told reporters after the meeting ended. (IANS)

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