Kishida likely to arrive in Korea on Sunday for meeting with Yoon

President Yoon Suk Yeol, left, and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida at a restuarant in Tokyo on March 16 after holding their first summit. [YONHAP]

Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida is likely to arrive in Seoul for a two-day trip on Sunday. It would be the first visit by a Japanese prime minister for a bilateral meeting in 12 years.

If held, the meeting will take place between President Yoon Suk Yeol’s state visit to Washington and the G-7 Summit in Hiroshima between May 19 and May 21, where Yoon has been invited as an observer.

Details on the summit between Yoon and Kishida have not yet been revealed, although there are growing expectations that Kishida will make a friendly gesture, such as an apology for Japan’s occupation and the damage caused during the time.

There are also expectations that Japan will announce the ending of restrictions on trade with Korea, including a reinstatement of Korea to the so-called "white list," a preferential trade process for friendly countries.

Korea added Japan back to its white list last month.

Although Kishida’s predecessor, the late Shinzo Abe, visited Korea in February 2018, it was to attend the PyeongChang Winter Olympics.

The last Japanese prime minister to visit Korea for a bilateral summit was in October 2011, when Yoshihiko Noda met with then-President Lee Myung-bak.

The visit would be the second meeting between Yoon and Kishida. They met in Tokyo in late March. The meeting in Tokyo was considered the first step in normalizing the relationship between the two countries.

The relationship quickly deteriorated after Japan imposed tougher export regulations on three key materials essential to Korea’s semiconductor and display production in 2019 as retaliation for the Korean Supreme Court’s decision to rule in favor of Korean forced labor during the Japanese colonial period.

Korea, in response, suspended the General Security of Military Information Agreement, while both countries crossed the other out from their white list.

Since early this year, the soured relationship between the two countries has started to improve, as the Yoon administration announced a plan where a public fund would compensate the wartime forced labor victims and their families.

This announcement led to Yoon being invited to Tokyo for the first summit between the leaders of the two nations in 12 years.

Yoon has been increasing his efforts to mend the relationship with Japan, even at the cost of Korean public opinion and an outcry from the opposition party.

Yoon has repeatedly said that countries with confrontational history, such as France and Germany, were able to move forward as they put their history in the past.

This view was once again repeated in his interview with the Washington Post published just before he left for Washington for his meeting with U.S. President Joe Biden, where he was quoted as saying, “I can’t accept the notion that because of what happened 100 years ago, something is absolutely impossible.”

This comment was attacked by the Democratic Party (DP) and was the target of a public backlash.

Yoon has been repeatedly attacked by those saying he gave up everything in every diplomatic summit, including Korea’s agreement not to pursue its own nuclear arsenal in exchange for the Washington Declaration, extending the already existing deterrence against North Korea.

DP leader Lee Jae-myung has criticized Yoon’s visit to both allies as diplomacy of a "sucker."

“In continuance to the humiliation of giving everything to Japan, the latest summit between Korea and U.S., the government has failed to protect the national interest,” Lee said on Thursday.

On Friday. he continued his attack, calling Yoon’s visit to the U.S. a disgrace.

BY LEE HO-JEONG [lee.hojeong@joongang.co.kr]