North Korea has repeatedly warned the South to stop "meddling" in nuclear talks between Pyongyang and Washington, but sided with Seoul for its trade row with Tokyo. PHOTO: AFP
WASHINGTON: US President Donald Trump said Friday he remained at the ready to help South Korea and Japan solve their lingering dispute over World War II-era forced labour that has blighted their trade ties.
After South Korea's high court ordered Japanese firms that used forced labour to compensate victims, Tokyo in early July restricted exports of chemicals vital to Seoul's world-leading chip and smartphone industry in an escalation of their decades-old row.
South Korean President Moon Jae-in has said Japan's actions are politically motivated and have caused an "unprecedented emergency" for his country's export-driven economy.
At the White House, Trump said Moon "tells me that they have a lot of friction going on now with respect to trade, primarily with respect to trade. Japan has some things that South Korea wants, and he asked me to get involved."
"I like both leaders. I like President Moon, and you know how I feel about Prime Minister (Shinzo) Abe. He's a very special guy also," the president added.
US hopes N Korea talks go ahead despite Pyongyang threat
"So if they need me, I'm there."
The row comes with tech companies around the world already under pressure from a weakening global outlook, while the chip sector is particularly threatened by soft demand.
Japanese and South Korean officials held hours of talks on July 12 to discuss their row, without a sign of detente.
That meeting came after the US State Department promised to do "everything we can" to ease tensions between the two US allies.
"We all face shared regional challenges and priorities in the Indo-Pacific and around the world," department spokeswoman Morgan Ortagus said at that time.
All three countries face an increasingly assertive China and the long-running threat of nuclear-armed North Korea.
Senior South Korean official Kim Hyun-chong, on a visit to Washington earlier this month, said the United States wanted high-level three-way talks to resolve the spat, according to the Yonhap news agency.
Ortagus declined to discuss potential meetings, but top US diplomat Mike Pompeo and his two counterparts are all expected to be in Bangkok around the end of the month for meetings of the ASEAN bloc of Southeast Asian nations.
In South Korea, where almost seven in 10 people report negative feelings toward the country's former colonial ruler, the spat has even led beer-lovers to boycott Japanese brews.
E-Mart, the country's largest hypermarket chain, said sales of Asahi, Kirin, Sapporo and Suntory beer fell nearly 25 per cent in the first two weeks of July compared with the second half of June.
More broadly, given the volume of trade between the two neighbours, if the restrictions are sustained or expanded it would have "no small impact on our economy", South Korea's central bank chief Lee Ju-yeol told reporters.
North Korea slams Japan over its trade spat with Seoul
North Korea's state media has slammed Japan for its recent trade restrictions against Seoul over wartime slavery disputes, accusing Tokyo of "destroying the trend of peace" on the Korean peninsula.
North Korea has repeatedly warned the South to stop "meddling" in nuclear talks between Pyongyang and Washington, but sided with Seoul for its trade row with Tokyo.
Japan is one of the most hawkish of the major powers on the nuclear-armed North -- whose leader Kim Jong Un agreed to a resumption of dialogue with Tokyo and Seoul's major ally the US last month -- and has received some of Pyongyang's harshest rhetoric.
Japan is "trying to destroy the trend of peace on the Korean Peninsula by putting pressure upon South Korea through the restrictions", reported the North's official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) on Friday night, describing Japan as its "sworn enemy".
It added: "The human, physical and emotional damage Japan has caused to the Korean people (during its colonial rule) cannot be compensated even if the entire nation of Japan sacrifices itself."
Pyongyang's remarks came as a top South Korean official said "all options" were open on the fate of a military intelligence-sharing agreement known as GSOMIA -- a pact that enables Seoul and Tokyo to share intelligence regarding North Korea -- if Japan does not withdraw its trade restrictions.
Tensions escalated Friday as a South Korean man in his 70s died after setting himself on fire outside the Japanese embassy in Seoul, and Japanese foreign minister summoned the South Korean ambassador in Tokyo over the dispute.
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South Korea and Japan are both US allies and democracies, but relations between the two have long been strained over issues related to Tokyo's brutal 1910-45 colonial rule of the Korean peninsula.
US President, who had a historic, impromptu stop on North Korean soil last month, said he remained at the ready to help South Korea and Japan solve their dispute.
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, seen as a foreign policy hawk, has repeatedly asked Trump to seek answers on the fate of Japanese people who Tokyo believes were abducted by Pyongyang.
North Korea, whose state media excoriates Japan on a near-daily basis for its wartime aggression, has shown little interest in engagement with Tokyo -- while its leader Kim has had summits with world leaders including Trump, China's Xi Jinping, Russia's Vladimir Putin and South Korea's Moon Jae-in in recent years.
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