South Korea’s government said Saturday it will not attend a memorial service near Japan’s Sado Island Gold Mines due to unspecified disagreements with Tokyo over the event, which stirred longstanding tensions over the abuse of Korean forced labourers at the site before the end of World War II.
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The decision marked a rare display of friction between the countries since the 2022 inauguration of South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol. Yoon has prioritized improving relations with Japan following years of disputes over their bitter history and solidifying three-way security cooperation with Washington to counter North Korean nuclear threats, but has faced accusations at home that he was neglecting the suffering of Korean survivors.
South Korea’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement it was impossible to settle the disagreements between both governments before the planned event near the mines on Sunday. It didn’t specify what the disagreements were.
Japanese officials had no immediate comment.
Some South Koreans had criticized Yoon’s government for throwing its support behind an event without securing a clear Japanese commitment to highlight the plight of Korean laborers.
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South Korean sentiment over the event worsened after the Japanese government said this week it would send Akiko Ikuina, a parliamentary vice minister at the country’s Foreign Ministry, to the event. Ikuina had reportedly visited Tokyo’s controversial Yasukuni Shrine following her election as a lawmaker in 2022. The shrine honours the country’s roughly 2.5 million war dead, including convicted war criminals. Japan’s neighbours view the shrine as a symbol of the country’s past militarism.