‘Japan should make concessions for S. Korea, if necessary,’ says a politician

The Yomiuri Shimbun has quoted Liberal Democratic Party Secretary-General Toshihiro Nikai saying that South Korea should make efforts for smoother diplomatic relations, but Japan should make the first gesture and make concessions, if necessary.

The Japanese newspaper reported that the secretary-general talked about the worsening South Korea-Japan relations during the filming of a program for BS TV Tokyo on Friday and emphasized that Japan should be more mature and have the broad-mindedness to listen to South Korea and respond appropriately.

It is unusual for a key figure of the Shinzo Abe administration to talk about “concessions for South Korea.” He has been considered as a representative pro-Korean figure but refused a meeting with a group of South Korean National Assembly members who came to Japan in late July to request the delay of Tokyo’s export regulations tightening and has behaved in line with the hard-line stance against South Korea of the Abe administration. “It is a positive message for South Korea-Japan relations, but is premature to assume that it signals the direction change of the Abe administration,” carefully said a diplomatic source in Tokyo.

“Just because it is not visible, it doesn’t mean that we don’t pay attention,” said a high-ranking official of the U.S. State Department on Thursday (local time) regarding the roles of the U.S. to address the tensions between the two East Asian countries. The official, who emphasized that Washington is making efforts behind the scenes, however, repeated the existing stance that Seoul and Tokyo should find solutions on their own urging the two countries to resolve the current tensions swiftly.

According to the information published by the State Department on Friday, the high-ranking official has added that some claim that the U.S. is not paying attention to the current issue and standing on the sidelines as there has been not much visible action, however this is far from truth. The official was asked about the roles of the U.S. on South Korea-Japan conflicts during a Thursday briefing on current issues in the Indo-Pacific at the United Nations General Assembly held in New York.


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