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The Japan Times (16 December 2019)

Foreign Minister Toshimitsu Motegi and his South Korean counterpart, Kang Kyung-wha, reaffirmed the importance of solving a bilateral dispute over wartime labor compensation during a brief meeting in Madrid on Sunday night, a senior Japanese official said.

Motegi and Kang held talks for around 10 minutes in the Spanish capital on the sidelines of a ministerial conference of Asian and European countries, as bilateral tensions remain over the wartime labor issue.

The two also discussed export controls and North Korea’s nuclear program.

Kang called for the early withdrawal of the stricter regulations Japan imposed on exports to its neighbor of materials needed to manufacture semiconductors and display panels, according to the South Korean Foreign Ministry.

The ministers confirmed that they will lay the groundwork for a summit between Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and South Korean President Moon Jae-in to be held later this month in Chengdu, China. Motegi and Kang also agreed to prepare for their next meeting in Chengdu when their leaders meet, according to the Japanese Foreign Ministry official.

The brief meeting came with ties between the neighboring countries at their lowest point in years over the wartime labor dispute and trade controls.

Relations soured following rulings last year by the South Korean Supreme Court ordering Japanese companies to compensate people who claimed they were subject to forced labor during Japan’s colonial rule of the Korean Peninsula between 1910 and 1945.

A formal meeting between the two foreign ministers was initially planned for Monday in Madrid on the sidelines of the Asia-Europe Meeting, but several Japanese government sources had said official talks were canceled due to scheduling difficulties.

Abe and Moon are slated to hold their first formal talks in more than a year on the sidelines of a trilateral summit with China, with the focus on whether they can ease tensions that are already taking an economic toll and have threatened to undermine security cooperation in the face of missile threats from North Korea.

https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2019/12/16/national/politics-diplomacy/japan-south-korea-wartime-labor/#.Xfci4GQzY2w