REUTERS
(REUTERS) South Korea’s Foreign Minister Yun Byung-se visited Tokyo on Sunday (June 21), the first such trip in four years, as the U.S. allies prepare to mark the 50th anniversary of the normalisation of ties amid a chill because of feuds over the wartime past.
Yun met Japanese Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida at Tokyo’s foreign ministry guest-house on Sunday. He is scheduled to attend a ceremony held by the South Korean embassy on Monday (June 22), the anniversary of a 1965 treaty normalising diplomatic ties.
Relations between Japan and South Korea have been cool, mainly because of disputes over the legacy of World War Two and Japan’s 1910-1945 colonisation of the Korean peninsula.
The issue of “comfort women”, as those forced to work in Japanese wartime military brothels are euphemistically known in Japan, has been especially thorny. The neighbours are also locked in a dispute over tiny islands that lie between them.
U.S. officials have urged them to repair ties as the United States and its Asian allies confront the challenge of an increasingly assertive China and an unpredictable North Korea.
