South Korean President Moon Jae-in said on Thursday that Japan should look back upon its imperialist past but Seoul will \u201cgladly join hands\u201d if Tokyo chooses dialogue, in a carefully choreographed message amid an escalating history and trade row.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In his Liberation Day address marking Korea\u2019s independence from Japan\u2019s 1910-45 colonial rule, Moon refrained from deriding Japan but laid out ambitious goals for inter-Korean relations, including an unprecedented call for unification by 2045.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But Moon said the two neighbours can overcome the past and move toward the future if Japan \u201ccontemplates a past that brought misfortune to its neighbouring countries\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cBetter late than never: if Japan chooses the path of dialogue and cooperation, we will gladly join hands,\u201d Moon said.Moon also painted a brighter outlook for the two Koreas, vowing efforts for a successful joint hosting of the 2032 Olympics and an eventual unification by 2045.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Moon warned the global free trade order may suffer if a country \u201cweaponises\u201d a sector where it has an upper edge, referring to curbs Japan has imposed on exports of some high-tech materials to South Korea.Seoul calls the move as retaliation over a feud about wartime forced labour, while Tokyo cited unspecified security reasons.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The dispute, triggered after a South Korean court ordered Japanese firms last year to compensate some of their former labourers, has brought their ties to their lowest ebb in more than half a century.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Such goals have long been considered distant, but come at a particularly sensitive time amid the North\u2019s ongoing series of missile tests, stalled nuclear talks with the United States and virtually severed inter-Korean communications.\u201cIn spite of a series of worrying actions taken by North Korea recently, the momentum for dialogue remains unshaken,\u201d Moon said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
South Korean President Moon Jae-in said on Thursday that Japan should look back upon its imperialist past but Seoul will \u201cgladly join hands\u201d if Tokyo chooses dialogue, in a carefully choreographed message amid an escalating history and trade row. In his Liberation Day address marking Korea\u2019s independence from Japan\u2019s 1910-45 colonial rule, Moon refrained from […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":68270,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[87],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-68269","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68269","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=68269"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68269\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":68271,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68269\/revisions\/68271"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/68270"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=68269"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=68269"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=68269"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}