Abe to skip meeting South Korean leader at G20 summit

OSAKA: Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has decided not to meet South Korean President Moon Jae-in on the sidelines of the Group of 20 summit in Osaka, the Sankei newspaper said.

The decision came after South Korea didn’t respond to Japan’s requests for arbitration to resolve compensation disputes for Koreans forced to work for Japanese companies before and during World War II, the newspaper reported yesterday, without saying where it got the information. The report comes nine days before the annual gathering of leaders of the world’s biggest economies, when the host nation’s leader usually meets one-on-one with visiting counterparts.

“Nothing has been decided,” Japanese foreign ministry spokeswoman, Natsuko Sakata, said yesterday in response to a question about the meeting. South Korea’s presidential office said arrangements for G20 meetings remained under discussion.

Long-fraught relations between the two US allies have soured over the past year after South Korean courts ordered Japanese companies to pay compensation for Koreans conscripted into work for Japan’s imperial war machine. The dispute has complicated US attempts coordinate a response to nuclear and missile threats from North Korea.

Japan has said that all claims relating to the 1910-45 colonial period were settled under a 1965 treaty that normalised ties. Mr Moon argues that the treaty doesn’t prevent Koreans from suing Japanese firms and that the court decisions should be respected.

Japan has been looking for a resolution on the forced labour cases by invoking treaty arbitration provisions for matters that can’t be settled through diplomatic channels. South Korea’s foreign ministry said last month that it received Japan’s official letter on arbitration and will “carefully” review the request “considering related elements”.

Kenji Kanasugi, director-general of the ministry’s Asian and Oceanian Affairs Bureau, called in an official from the South Korean embassy yesterday to convey Japan’s disappointment over what Tokyo saw as South Korea’s failure to meet a deadline on arbitration spelled out in the treaty.

President Donald Trump will be in Osaka for the G20 that starts on June 28 and was expected to visit South Korea after the meeting. But it was unclear whether US leader might use the gathering to get the two American allies to patch up the dispute.

There’s little political incentive for either Mr Moon or Mr Abe to climb down — a poll published last week found the proportion of Japanese with a positive view of South Korea had fallen to a record low of 20%.