Tag: Japan

This is a tricky issue that the Yoon administration is likely not going to win any domestic political points from even if they come up with a resolution. This issue is just too easy for the political opposition to demagogue:

The top diplomats of South Korea and Japan agreed Monday on the need for an early resolution of the long-running dispute over Korean victims of wartime forced labor.

Foreign Minister Park Jin and his Japanese counterpart, Yoshimasa Hayashi, held talks in Tokyo to discuss ways to mend soured bilateral ties and settle historical feuds stemming from Japan’s 1910-45 colonial rule of Korea. Park arrived earlier in the day in his first official visit to Japan since taking office in May. 

During the talks, Park said the Seoul government will make efforts to draw “a reasonable solution” related to the force labor issue and the two sides shared the view that the issue needs to be promptly resolved, Seoul’s ministry said in a release. (….)

Possible solutions suggested by observers include the creation of a fund with contributions from Korean and Japanese firms or the South Korean government compensating the victims on behalf of the Japanese companies.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

It is absolutely bizarre that Shinzo Abe who was demonized by many in South Korea ends up being killed by a Japanese citizens angry because he believed Abe was friendly with a Korean church:

The man who fatally shot former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe told police that his mother had made a “huge donation” to a religious body, and he harbored a grudge against the group, which he believed was associated with the Japanese leader, investigative sources said Saturday.

A day after the death of Japan’s longest-serving prime minister, one of the sources also quoted Tetsuya Yamagami as saying something to the effect of “initially, I intended to attack an executive of the group” but decided to target Abe instead.

Japan Today

You can read more at the link, but it has now been reported the religious body that Yamagami was angered with was the Unification Church:

The Unification Church also known as the “Moonies” had ties to Shinzo Abe:

The Unification Church was founded in 1954 in Seoul by Sun Myung Moon who claimed to be the messiah. It has approximately 3 million members worldwide. In the U.S., it is known as the Moonies where it was famous for young church members who left school and careers to devote themselves to the church, especially fundraising, offering flowers in exchange for donations. (…..)

In Japan, the church is known as Touitsu Kyokai 統一教会 where it is famous for its mass weddings, including one in 1988 marrying 8,000 Japanese among the 13,000 brides and grooms that hadn’t even met each other until just before the ceremony.

Medium

You can read more at the link, but Abe had spoken at Moonie events before and the church provided his political party with campaign workers. It appears this was all enough to send Yamagami over the edge to target Abe after his mother gave the Unification Church an unknown amount of money that he probably thought should have gone to a loser like himself.

Very shocking news out of Japan yesterday that former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe was shot and killed by an assassin. Even odder about this assassination is that the killer says he did not do it for political reasons:

Former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe was the victim of a fatal gun attack while taking part in a campaign event for the House of Councillors election in Nara City on Friday. He was 67.

After being shot at around 11:30 a.m., he was confirmed dead at 5:03 p.m. at Nara Medical University Hospital in Kashihara, Nara Prefecture, where he was transported by ambulance and a medical helicopter immediately after the attack.

According to doctors, Abe suffered a wound deep enough to reach the heart, and when he was brought to the hospital, he was in cardiopulmonary arrest, making rescue quite difficult.

He had two gunshot wounds to his neck. The medical team tried to stop the bleeding and gave him a large amount of blood through transfusions, but his heartbeat did not resume, the doctors said at a press conference on Friday evening.

Police sources had earlier said Abe was shot from behind in the upper back and elsewhere. Two shots were heard, according to witnesses.

Tetsuya Yamagami, 41, of Nara City, was arrested at the scene on suspicion of attempted murder at 11:32 a.m. Yamagami is believed to have shot Abe at close range and a gun has been recovered, according to a police officer.

“I had no grudge against former Prime Minister Abe for his political beliefs,” Yamagami was quoted as telling the police during questioning, according to Nara prefectural police sources.

Yomiuri

You can read more at the link, but according to NHK they are saying Yamagami was dissatisfied with the prime minister and that is why he decided to kill him, but it was not because of his politics. Supposedly Yamagami thought Abe had ties to an organization he has a grudge against. The whole thing is bizarre which may mean this guy might just be a nut job trying to make himself famous like so many of the loser mass shooters we have in the U.S.

This sounds like a positive encounter between President Yoon and Prime Minister Kishida:

South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol talked briefly with Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida during a gala dinner for NATO summit participants in Madrid on Tuesday and expressed hope for the future-oriented development of relations between the two countries, officials said.

The encounter, which lasted three to four minutes at the dinner party hosted by Spain’s King Felipe VI, began as Kishida offered greetings to Yoon with congratulations on his inauguration and the local election victory of Yoon’s ruling party, according to Yoon’s office.

Yoon said in response that he wishes Kishida’s Liberal Democratic Party good results in Japan’s upcoming upper house elections.

“After the upper house elections, I and my aides plan to resolve pending issues between Korea and Japan as early as possible and move forward in a future-oriented manner,” Yoon was quoted as telling Kishida.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

It has been nearly five years since the last trilateral meeting, so it is great to see this coordination happening again:

President Yoon Suk-yeol will hold a trilateral meeting with U.S. President Joe Biden and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida in Spain this week on the sidelines of a NATO summit, his office said Sunday. 

The trilateral summit, set for Wednesday in Madrid, will be the first such gathering in four years and nine months since the last meeting was held in September 2017 on the margins of a U.N. General Assembly. No trilateral meeting has since taken place amid badly frayed relations between Seoul and Tokyo.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

Just think how much crap must have been mixed into this school lunch meal if the principal was able to smell it enough to cancel lunch:

On June 13, a 20-year-old employee of a public school in Okazaki, Aichi Prefecture, was charged with mixing human feces into the lunch there. More specifically it was found in the okazu of the lunch, which loosely translates to “side dish” and refers to the non-rice component of a meal. It’s a pretty wide-ranging term that can refer to pretty much any food from fried chicken to a brick of tofu.

The incident occurred on Oct 8, 2021, when the principal of the school taste-tested the okazu of the day’s meal in advance in the staff room and noticed that it had a peculiar odor and discoloration. He immediately canceled the meal for everyone else and submitted the food to the public health center for examination. The results confirmed that it contained E. coli bacteria, and even though the okazu was made in a separate central facility, no other schools had any trace of fecal matter in their food.

Thanks to the keen senses and quick action of the principal, none of his students or staff members were exposed to the contaminated food and did not suffer any illness as a result. A subsequent investigation led back to the staff member, though it is unclear what her motive was or how she managed to mix the excrement into the food.

Japan Today

You can read more at the link.

This is something that has been done in the past, but was suspended under the liberal Moon Jae-in administration. Now with a new President it appears restarting trilateral cooperation may soon become a reality:

The defense chiefs of South Korea, the United States and Japan agreed Saturday to step up cooperation to counter North Korea’s missile threats through their combined regular security exercises, including missile warning drills, Seoul’s defense ministry said. 

Lee Jong-sup and his U.S. and Japanese counterparts, Lloyd Austin and Nobuo Kishi, reached the agreement during their gathering held on the margins of the annual Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore.

Korea Times

You can read more at the link.

This was actually quite a large grouping of fighter jets flying over the waters near Korea yesterday. Just the ROK itself flew 16 fighter jets. Unfortunately the ROK and Japan did not fly together, but instead in different groupings with American fighters:

The United States and its Asian allies flew dozens of fighter jets over waters surrounding the Korean Peninsula on Tuesday in a show of force as their diplomats discussed a coordinated response to a possibly imminent North Korean nuclear test.

The flights came as U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman traveled to Seoul for discussions with South Korea and Japanese officials over the gathering North Korean threat and warned of a “swift and forceful” counterresponse if the North proceeds with a nuclear test explosion, which would be its first in nearly five years.

Yahoo News

You can read more at the link.