SEOUL (Reuters) -South Korean President Lee Jae Myung said he intended to stick to existing agreements with Japan tied to its colonial rule of the Korean peninsula, including one on the treatment of Korean women forced to work in its military brothels.
The legacy of Japan’s colonisation from 1910 to 1945 is politically sensitive for both countries, with many surviving “comfort women”, a Japanese euphemism for the sex abuse victims, still demanding Tokyo’s formal apology and compensation.
Lee, whose liberal Democratic Party has opposed the deal, made the comments in an interview with Japan’s Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper published on Thursday ahead of his Tokyo summit this week with Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba.
“For South Korean people, that agreement by the previous administration is very difficult to accept, but it is a promise as a nation, so it is undesirable to overturn it,” Lee told the paper, referring to the 2015 pact.
In that agreement, struck with South Korea’s then-conservative government, Japan apologised to the victims and gave 1 billion yen ($6.8 million) to a fund to help them.
The governments agreed the issue would be “irreversibly resolved” if both fulfilled their obligations.
The issues around comfort women and forced labour during wartime have regularly been a source of friction between Japan and neighbours South Korea and China.
Lee said the victims were a “heartbreaking issue” for South Koreans and urged Japan to acknowledge the truth and continue to talk to them, the paper added.
Japan was a “very important country” and he wanted to strengthen economic and security ties with Tokyo, Lee said, as he reiterated the importance of three-way ties with Japan and the United States, the paper said.
After the Tokyo summit, Lee will head to Washington to meet U.S. President Donald Trump.
Lee’s interview touched on security issues, particularly the shared concern with Japan over the nuclear and missile programmess of their neighbour North Korea.
Both countries have stepped up security cooperation with key ally the United States in recent years to counter North Korea’s threats.
Lee said his administration would lay the groundwork to ultimately dismantle North Korea’s nuclear weapons programme, through talks with Pyongyang and close cooperation with Washington.
“(Our) policy direction is the denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula,” Lee’s office quoted him as saying in the interview. “Phase 1 is a freeze on nuclear weapons and missiles, Phase 2 is reduction, and Phase 3 is denuclearisation.”
North Korea has so far dismissed Lee’s peace overtures as “gibberish” and a “pipedream”.
($1=147.4100 yen)
(Reporting by Ju-min Park; Editing by Ed Davies and Clarence Fernandez)
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