After taking office, South Korean President Yoon Seok-wook threw an olive branch to Japan. Will relations between South Korea and Japan, which have been frozen for nearly three years, warm up here?
Yin Xiyue: I hope to meet with Kishida Fumio at an early date
Japanese Foreign Minister Hayashi Fong, in his capacity as the Prime Minister's special envoy, attended the inauguration ceremony of the new President of the Republic of Korea, Yoon Seok-yue, on the morning of the 10th, and forwarded Kishida Fumio's handwritten letter to Yoon Seok-yue. This is the first time in four years that a senior Japanese government official has visited South Korea. When meeting with Lin Fangzheng, Yin Xiyue expressed the hope to meet with Kishida at an early date and work together to improve Japan-ROK relations.
When yin Xiyue received a group of Japanese parliamentarians at the president's office on the 11th, he said that the South Korean government will take measures to promote the resumption of flights from Seoul Gimpo to Tokyo Haneda, which has been suspended due to the epidemic, and promote personnel exchanges between the two countries.
Korean culture has quietly emerged among young Japanese people
At the level of people-to-people exchanges, the relationship between the two sides also seems to have signs of melting ice. In Harajuku, Tokyo's trendy hub, there is a Korean restaurant that has just opened.
Cute pastries and delicious Korean hot dogs are popular with young customers.
The 2019 "Boycott of Japanese Goods" campaign swept across South Korea
In 2019, the "Boycott japanese goods" campaign swept across South Korea as the Japanese government tightened export controls on semiconductor raw materials in South Korea.
Japanese products began to disappear from supermarkets in South Korea, and Japanese companies in South Korea also withdrew from South Korea. Japan-South Korea relations fell to a post-war low. But now the atmosphere between Japan and South Korea seems to have changed.
South Korea's "boycott of Japanese goods" movement receded
Japanese goods are making a comeback
This Japanese-style izakaya offers Japanese yakitori and is popular. Customers also drank Japanese beer.
The three customers drank Japanese sake as they toasted. Japanese sake, which once disappeared from Korean supermarkets, is back on the shelves again. At the beginning of this year, Japanese beer imports in the South Korean market have reached their highest level since the beginning of the boycott of Japanese goods.
Japan's Liberal Democratic Party believes internally
There should be no rush to achieve summit talks
However, there are doubts about whether Japan-South Korea relations will pick up.
According to Kyodo News Agency, Japan's Liberal Democratic Party held a joint meeting of the Foreign Affairs Group on the 11th, and around the japan-South Korea summit talks, the Liberal Democratic Party believed that "it should not be rushed to achieve."
According to a poll conducted by the Japanese media on Japan-South Korea relations after Yoon Seok-yue's victory, 73.7 percent of Japanese people believe that Japan-South Korea relations will not improve; 3.4 percent believe that they will further deteriorate; 4.2 percent hold a neutral opinion; and 18.7 percent think it will "get better."
Japanese media analyzed this, saying, "Due to the deep-rooted anti-Japanese sentiment in South Korea, many people within the Japanese government also believe that 'we can't expect great changes in the relations between the two countries.'"
In response to Yoon Seok-yue's idea of improving South Korea-Japan relations, there are also opposition voices in South Korea that "this is collusion with Japan, which uses history as a trading tool."
Japanese media: Security cooperation may be the key to breaking the game
Japan Economic News commented on the 12th that there are many outstanding issues between Japan and South Korea, including: World War II labor compensation, comfort women compensation, semiconductor raw material export control, "Military Intelligence Protection Agreement", defense exchanges, aquatic product embargo, Sado Kanayama application, Japan's nuclear pollution water, etc., each problem seems to be scattered, but connected into a string, of which security cooperation may be the key to breaking the situation.
However, even for the sake of the "Indo-Pacific strategy", the United States is happy to see more dialogue between Japan and South Korea, and it is not easy for the two countries to truly "get closer" and improve relations.
Source: CCTV4
Process Edit: TF060