Japan makes peace vow to U.S.

South Korea defends cancellation of spy-sharing agreement

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe answers reporters' questions at his official residence in Tokyo Friday, Aug. 23, 2019. Abe said South Korea's decision to cancel a deal to share military intelligence is damaging mutual trust, and he vowed to work closely with the U.S. for regional peace. Abe also accused Seoul of not keeping past promises. The military agreement started in 2016. (Yoshitaka Sugawara/Kyodo News via AP)
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe answers reporters' questions at his official residence in Tokyo Friday, Aug. 23, 2019. Abe said South Korea's decision to cancel a deal to share military intelligence is damaging mutual trust, and he vowed to work closely with the U.S. for regional peace. Abe also accused Seoul of not keeping past promises. The military agreement started in 2016. (Yoshitaka Sugawara/Kyodo News via AP)

TOKYO -- Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe vowed Friday to work closely with the U.S. for regional peace after South Korea's decision to cancel a deal with Japan to share military intelligence.

Abe also accused South Korea of not keeping past promises. The intelligence agreement started in 2016.

"We will continue to closely coordinate with the U.S. to ensure regional peace and prosperity, as well as Japan's security," he said ahead of his departure for the Group of Seven summit of industrialized nations in France.

South Korea announced Thursday that it would terminate the intelligence deal because Tokyo's decision to downgrade South Korea's preferential trade status had caused a "grave" change in the security cooperation between the countries. Seoul says it will downgrade Tokyo's trade status as well, a change that would take effect in September.

Senior South Korean presidential official Kim Hyun-chong on Friday defended his government's decision. He told reporters that "there is no longer any justification" for South Korea to continue the deal because of Japan's claim that basic trust between the countries had been undermined.

South Korea has accused Japan of weaponizing trade to punish it over a separate dispute linked to Japan's colonial rule of the Korean Peninsula from 1910 to 1945. Japan denies any retaliation.

Kim accused Japan of having ignored South Korea's repeated calls for dialogue and other conciliatory steps to resolve the bitter trade and history disputes. He said Japan's "breach of diplomatic etiquette" had undermined "our national pride."

Japan has long claimed all wartime compensation issues were settled when the two countries normalized relations under a 1965 treaty.

But South Korea's Supreme Court last year ruled that the deal did not cover individual rights to seek reparations and has ordered compensation for victims of forced labor under Japan's colonial rule.

South Korea's decision on the military intelligence pact came as a surprise to many and underlined how much relations with Japan have deteriorated.

The U.S. sees both South Korea and Japan as important allies in northern Asia amid continuing threats from North Korea, which has conducted several weapons tests in the past month, including one early today.

The Pentagon expressed "strong concern and disappointment" over the collapse of the agreement.

Kim said South Korea will push to bolster its alliance with the United States. He said South Korea will also try to actively use a trilateral intelligence-sharing channel with the United States and Japan. Before the 2016 bilateral deal was forged, Seoul and Tokyo used that three-way channel to exchange intelligence via the United States.

China, North Korea's last major ally, which earlier criticized the intelligence deal, said Friday that it respects South Korea's "independent right of a sovereign state" to take the step.

"The bilateral arrangements between the relevant sides should be in favor of regional peace and stability and the peace process of the peninsula. It should not harm the interests of any third parties," Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang said in a daily briefing.

South Korean President Moon Jae-in has declared that his country will "never again lose" to Japan, although he later softened his tone and said he was willing to talk with Tokyo.

Separately, North Korea's foreign minister on Friday called U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo a "poisonous plant of American diplomacy" and vowed to "shutter the absurd dream" that sanctions will force a change in Pyongyang.

The North's rhetoric may dim the prospect for an early resumption of nuclear negotiations between the countries. A senior U.S. diplomat said earlier this week that Washington was ready to restart the talks, a day after U.S. and South Korean militaries ended their regular drills that Pyongyang called an invasion rehearsal.

North Korean Foreign Minister Ri Yong Ho made the comments to protest Pompeo's remarks in an interview in which he said that Washington will maintain crippling sanctions on North Korea unless it denuclearizes.

Ri said he couldn't just let the "reckless remarks" by Pompeo pass by him because they came amid a possible restart of the nuclear talks. Ri said Pompeo is a "brazen" man because he "had begged for" North Korean denuclearization and improved bilateral ties when he visited Pyongyang and met leader Kim Jong Un several times.

Ri said North Korea is ready for both dialogue and confrontation. But he warned that North Korea will try to remain "America's biggest threat" if the United States continues to confront the North with sanctions.

Information for this article was contributed by Hyung-jin Kim, Yuri Kageyama and Christopher Bodeen of The Associated Press.

photo

AP/YOSHITAKA SUGAWARA

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said Friday in Tokyo that Japan “will continue to closely coordinate with the U.S.” on security matters after the intelligence-sharing break with South Korea.

A Section on 08/24/2019

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