During a joint press conference in Seoul with his South Korean counterpart Thursday, Japanese Foreign Minister Katsuya Okada apologized for his nation’s 35-year colonization of the peninsula. “The people of South Korea were deprived of their country and their ethnic pride was deeply hurt,” Okada said. “We must never forget the feelings of the victims.”
The statements came at a particularly sensitive time for the two countries, as this August will mark the 100-year anniversary of Japan’s annexation of Korea. Meanwhile, the two nations have been trying to pave a more positive “future-oriented” relationship, Okada and South Korean Foreign Minister Yu Myung Hwan said at the press conference. Among the modern-day issues they are working on are getting North Korea back to multilateral talks, possible cooperative efforts in the reconstruction effort in Afghanistan, and the suffrage issue for ethnic Koreans living in Japan.
According to Kyodo News Service, Yu reiterated to Okada his hope that Japan would move toward granting voting rights to Korean legal permanent residents in Japan. About half of Japan’s legal permanent residents are Korean, mostly because many were forcibly brought there as laborers during the colonial rule from 1910 to 1945. Japan’s Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama, from the Democratic Party, is reportedly in favor of giving these non-citizens voting rights.
Okada also met with South Korean President Lee Myung Bak in a separate meeting later in the day. Lee was quoted by Kyodo News as saying that this is an ”important year” and that he hopes both nations ”can create a good opportunity to move toward the future.”
