Visiting South Korean intelligence chief Park Jie Won met with Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga on Wednesday, a diplomatic source said, the meeting coming at a time when relations between their nations remain strained.
South Korea’s Yonhap News Agency reported Thursday the head of the National Intelligence Service conveyed to Suga during the meeting the need to improve bilateral ties and his nation’s intention to work to that end, and the Japanese leader echoed the need.
Park, who arrived in Japan on Tuesday, expressed the view that the current status of the bilateral relationship is not ideal, saying that it “should not remain like this,” according to the report.
Park also conveyed hope to Suga that the premier and South Korean President Moon Jae In will hold talks, according to a source familiar with their conversation.
Asked about their meeting in a regular news conference, Japan’s top government spokesman Chief Cabinet Secretary Katsunobu Kato said, “The government has been exchanging views and working with foreign intelligence agencies at various levels,” but declined to comment further on the basis it pertains to intelligence activities.
During his visit to Japan last November, the South Korean official also met with Suga and conveyed to him Moon’s willingness to repair bilateral ties.
Japan-South Korea relations have sunk to their lowest point in decades following South Korean Supreme Court rulings in 2018 that ordered Japanese companies to compensate plaintiffs who were laborers during Japan’s 1910-1945 colonial rule of the Korean Peninsula.
Also souring ties is the issue of Koreans forced to work as “comfort women” in Japan’s wartime military brothels.
The foreign ministers of the two countries held their first talks in more than a year in London earlier this month but failed to span the divide over the issues.
Also Wednesday, Park held talks with Hiroaki Takizawa, Japan’s director of Cabinet intelligence, and Avril Haines, U.S. director of national intelligence, according to a Japanese government source.
It was the first in-person meeting among the intelligence chiefs of the three countries since Joe Biden became U.S. president in January.
Park also held a telephone conversation with Toshihiro Nikai, secretary general of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party and the party’s No. 2 in command, on Wednesday.
The two agreed that both sides should work hard to improve bilateral ties, according to a senior party official who was with Nikai during the conversation.
Park and Nikai have known each other for about two decades. They held talks in Tokyo during Park’s last visit.