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Minister of Foreign Affairs Park Jin will make an official visit to Japan for 3 days and 2 nights from today (18th).
I am scheduled to meet with Japanese Foreign Minister Yoshimasa Hayashi and foreign minister, and attention is focused on whether Korea-Japan relations, which have been frozen since the Supreme Court ruling on compensation for forced labor, will improve.
Correspondent Park Chan-geun.
<Reporter>
Minister of Foreign Affairs Park Jin visits Japan today and holds the first meeting of the foreign ministers of Korea and Japan since the inauguration of the Yun Seok-yeol government.
It is the first time in four years and seven months since the visit of former Foreign Minister Kang Kyung-wha to Japan in December 2018 that a South Korean foreign minister is visiting Japan to discuss current issues between the two countries.
Relations between the two countries deteriorated sharply in 2018 when the Supreme Court made a final ruling against Nippon Steel and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries to compensate victims of forced labor.
Relations between Korea and Japan became even more twisted as Japan retaliated by restricting exports of essential materials for semiconductors, leading to conflicts over the military information protection agreement.
The prevailing analysis is that it is difficult to expect a dramatic reversal of Korea-Japan relations as the scope of the conflict over the issue of reparation has not yet narrowed.
For this reason, there are also observations that the focus will be on creating an atmosphere for restoring relations between Korea and Japan rather than reaching a concrete agreement right away.
Minister Park expressed his condolences to former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who was killed in an attack on the 8th during his visit to Japan, and is also pursuing a plan to prevent Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida.