Japanese Prime Minister Kishida mulls Seoul visit next month before stepping down: Report

Diplomacy

Japanese Prime Minister Kishida mulls Seoul visit next month before stepping down: Report

Published: 21 Aug. 2024, 15:06 Updated: 22 Aug. 2024, 15:17

LIM JEONG-WON
lim.jeongwon@joongang.co.kr

Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida attends a press conference at his office in Tokyo to announce he will not run in the upcoming party leadership vote in September on Aug. 14. [AP/YONHAP]

Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida is considering visiting South Korea early next month to hold a summit with President Yoon Suk Yeol, Kyodo News reported late Tuesday, citing diplomatic sources.

However, Seoul's presidential office said nothing concrete has been decided yet about Kishida’s visit.

Kishida reportedly hopes to meet with Yoon before he leaves office to review South Korea and Japan's progress in improving bilateral relations and confirm continued cooperation in areas such as security.

Kishida has decided not to run in Japan's ruling Liberal Democratic Party election on Sept. 27 and will step down from the post of prime minister after the election.

At a press conference on Aug. 14, Kishida declared that he would not run in the next election and cited the “improvement of South Korea-Japan relations” and the “registration of the Sado mines as a Unesco World Heritage site” as major achievements during his three years in office.

In particular, Kishida said the next prime minister should solidify South Korea-Japan relations, saying that “next year marks the 60th anniversary of the normalization of South Korea-Japan diplomatic relations, and we must make the normalization of relations even more concrete.”

However, Kyodo News said the visit is still up in the air due to the South Korean public's criticism of Yoon over the registration of the Sado mines as a Unesco World Heritage site. Accordingly, the South Korean government may view a visit by Kishida negatively.

“Even before the Japanese prime minister’s decision not to run in the next election, the Japanese side had expressed Kishida’s intention to visit Seoul, and there have been related discussions since, but nothing has been decided yet,” said a senior presidential office official on Tuesday. “President Yoon is willing to meet Kishida at any time as part of shuttle diplomacy between South Korea and Japan, and we will announce any decisions when they are made.”

The governments of South Korea and Japan, which had clashed over historical issues such as the forced mobilization of Korean workers during Japan’s 1910-45 colonial rule, began normalizing relations after Yoon announced a solution to the forced labor problem in March 2023.

Yoon and Kishida resumed “shuttle diplomacy,” in which the two leaders regularly visited each other’s countries. The Japanese government also lifted export restrictions on Korea, and the Korean government normalized the General Security of Military Information Agreement (Gsomia) with Japan.

On Sunday, in light of the first anniversary of the Camp David summit between Yoon, Kishida and U.S. President Joe Biden, the three leaders released a joint statement stressing their "unshakeable belief" in their trilateral security cooperation and the progress following the summit.

They noted the progress made by the three countries in combating efforts by North Korea to generate revenue for its weapons of mass destruction programs through cybercrime and other illicit means.

BY LIM JEONG-WON [lim.jeongwon@joongang.co.kr]