Wave of anger could sweep liberals to victory in South Korea election
The 66-year-old chef and restaurant owner is one face of South Korea's North Chungcheong Province, a swing region that has become even more pivotal at a time of deep political polarisation in Asia's fourth-largest economy.
"We need to get furthest away from all that martial law drama to get things back to where they were," Park said at her Korean restaurant two hours south of Seoul, adding liberal candidate "Lee Jae-myung looks alright for that".
Voters are now looking for the winner of the June 3 snap election to calm the economic and political shocks that have roiled the country since Yoon's December 3 martial law decree led to months of economic downturn and sparked nationwide protests.
Park's Chungcheong Province is a key battleground for Kim Moon-soo, candidate for the conservative People Power Party campaigning on deregulations for companies, and liberal Democratic Party frontrunner Lee, who's vowing to bring back stability after months of turmoil.
In swing regions such as North Chungcheong Province, where Jechon is located, the ruling conservative party risks losing a big chunk of its vote base with many voters blaming the martial law debacle for weaker private consumption and easing export momentum.
Park's business crashed after Yoon's declaration with some of her biggest customers who are local council officials cancelling dinner reservations in groups of five to 10.
"The first call I got on Dec. 4 was from a regular customer who does his year-end dinner here every year. I asked him why he is cancelling it, and he said -- 'don't you watch news?'"
Lee, who defied Yoon's martial law decree, had a 10-percentage point lead over Kim in one of the final opinion polls issued on Tuesday with 45% of voters trusting him to revive the economy compared to 32% for Kim.
Conservatives have criticised Lee for a series of criminal cases he faces over accusations of election law violations, corruption, and other issues, but they have struggled to unify behind a single candidate and to distance themselves from Yoon.
On Friday, right-winger Kim said voting for Lee would end up "collapsing our economy", hoping to sway voters in small cities such as Jecheon, an inland town of about 130,000 surrounded by mountainous tourist spots, who are looking for a turning point to revive South Korea's fortunes.
But the martial law call continues to weigh heavily on conservative chances.
"We definitely had fewer customers, especially from office dinners, after the martial law declaration. It did bite us hard," said Choi, a Chinese restaurant owner in Pangyo, a town south of Seoul.
"Lee is someone who will uplift more of us who are not doing so well."
Consumer sentiment, which dropped by the most since the outbreak of COVID-19 in December, recovered to pre-martial-law levels of 101.8 in May, on expectations of a fresh stimulus package under a new leader.
The shock move rattled markets and put the won among the region's worst-performing currencies of the last year, hurt business sentiment even before exporters absorbed the full force of U.S. President Donald Trump's punitive tariff policies.
Now, the strains are setting in, as economic tailwinds from the semiconductor boom and reforms in the capital markets in the past few years are fading.
Whoever wins the June 3 election will face an economy that contracted in the first quarter, manage negotiations with Washington to avoid high tariffs, and assuage voters such as Park who are seeing their living standards go backwards from elevated grocery bills and weak spending.
South Korea's election campaign has been light on policy and heavy on spectacle after twists and turns involving the main candidates.
"I wish they had taken housing supply and boosting the domestic market more seriously in their pledges," said 59-year-old Jung Soo-hyeon. "But perhaps because it's a snap election, that kind of in-depth consideration seems to be missing — which is a bit disappointing."
Analysts say voters watched economic pledges closely as consumption has been badly hit.
A win for Lee could spur "faster economic growth in the short term," Kim Jin-wook of Citi Research said.
The Democratic Party "would likely be relatively more keen on providing policy and support for the mid-to-low-income bracket," he added.
While both top candidates have pledged to draft a second supplementary budget for the year as soon as the election is over, Lee has also promised vouchers to help local businesses and subsidies for childcare, youth, and the elderly.
While Lee has backed away from advocating for universal basic income, some voters including Park, who backed Yoon last time, said they see Lee as most likely to look out for their interests.
"Lee's party seems to be willing to give out more to those who are struggling," Park said, emphasizing that "change" is important.
($1 = 1,376.1000 won)
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The Guardian
16 hours ago
- The Guardian
‘A structural dependence on heavy industry': can South Korea wean itself off fossil fuels?
GDP per capita per annum: US$34,640 (global average $14,210) Total annual tonnes CO2: 577.42.m (tenth highest country) CO2 per capita: 11.16 metric tonnes (global average 4.7) Most recent NDC (carbon plan): 2021 Climate plans: highly insufficient On a cool early morning on South Korea's east coast, Eunbin Kang pointed to a monument to a vanishing era. The 2.1GW Samcheok Blue power plant which came online in South Korea in January looms out of the headlands above a beach made internationally famous by a K-pop album shoot. It is expected to emit 13m tonnes of CO2 annually, while its lifespan could stretch beyond 2050, the year by which the country has pledged to reach carbon neutrality. The country was building coal-fired power plants, said Kang, an activist who heads the Youth Climate Emergency Action group and relocated to this city to oppose the facility, 'even as the climate emergency demands an immediate halt to fossil fuel expansion'. But Samcheok is not an outlier. It is a symbol of the stark climate contradiction at the heart of the world's 12th largest economy, celebrated for its technological prowess in semiconductors and electric vehicle batteries, yet among the top ten worst global climate performers. Despite South Korea's impressive climate pledges to reach net zero by 2050 with a 40% reduction in emissions from 2018 levels by 2030, fossil fuels still dominate its energy mix: 60% of electricity comes from coal and gas, while renewables make up just 9%, a quarter of the OECD average of 34%. Monopoly strangling transition At the heart of South Korea's climate failure is an energy model based on a state monopoly and central planning. Korea Electric Power Corporation (Kepco), the state-owned energy company, controls transmission, distribution and retail, while its subsidiaries dominate generation, creating structural challenges for competitors. These include Korea South-East Power, Korea Western Power and four other generation subsidiaries that together operate the vast majority of the country's coal, gas and nuclear power plants. Meanwhile, renewable energy developers face an obstacle course of regulatory barriers. Until recently, windfarm developers had to obtain 28 different permits from multiple ministries in a bureaucratic maze which created years of delays and significantly increased project costs, making many otherwise viable developments financially unfeasible. Progress was made in early 2025 with the passage of a long-awaited bill aimed at streamlining approvals, although the law won't take effect until 2026. Grid connection remains another hurdle. While electricity demand has grown by 98% over the past two decades, the transmission network has expanded by just 26%, but attempts to expand the grid have led to bitter local conflicts. In Miryang, South Gyeongsang province, the government tried to compel residents to sell up to clear space for transmission towers and people faced violent crackdowns during a six-year standoff. Currently, a dozen such projects are stalled in the country. In February 2025, the National Assembly passed a Power Grid Special Act aimed at expanding transmission. But civic groups warn the law reinforces the country's decades-old top-down model of infrastructure development, removing what few safeguards remained around public consultation and environmental review. 'We fully acknowledge that renewable energy transition requires transmission lines,' says Kim Jeong-jin from Friends of the Earth in Dangjin, where one project faced more than 10 years of delays due to local opposition. 'But the repeated conflicts arise because the electricity is not even for local use, yet it causes damage to our region without any regard for our voices.' The country's energy strategy is guided by the Basic Plan for Electricity Supply and Demand, a 15-year forecast revised every two years. But the framework, which dates back to the 1960s, still prioritises centralised, large-scale power generation – a model built for coal and nuclear, and fundamentally incompatible with today's decentralised, flexible renewable technologies. Political volatility worsens the problem. Each five-year presidential term brings a policy reversal. For instance, in 2017, President Moon Jae-in announced a nuclear phase-out; his successor, the now disgraced ex-president Yoon Suk Yeol, reversed course five years later. This whiplash undermines any long-term planning for renewables – a problem faced by democracies around the world. The consequences are stark. After Russia's invasion of Ukraine sent fossil fuel prices soaring, Kepco incurred enormous losses. In 2022 alone, South Korea faced an extra 22tn won (£11.9 bn) in LNG power costs. Yet the government kept electricity prices artificially low, a political choice that pushed Kepco's debt to a staggering 205tn won (£111bn) by 2024. Despite this crisis, meaningful reform remains elusive. This entrenched monopoly system has effectively blocked the clean energy transition, with independent renewable producers struggling to gain meaningful access to a market dominated by fossil fuel interests. Carbon-intensive by design More broadly, South Korea's postwar rise relied on energy-intensive industries: steel, petrochemicals, shipbuilding and semiconductors. 'This structural dependency on heavy and chemical industries makes the energy transition extraordinarily difficult,' says Park Sangin, a professor of economics at Seoul National University. 'These industries are deeply embedded in the country's economic fabric and require vast amounts of stable, cheap electricity.' Powerful chaebols, or family-controlled conglomerates like Posco, Samsung and Hyundai, exert outsized influence on national policy. Their operations are supported by an electricity market designed for industrial stability, not climate mitigation. And the problem isn't just domestic; South Korea also finances and provides the infrastructure for fossil fuels globally. South Korean shipbuilders dominate the global market for LNG carriers. Public financial institutions also bankroll overseas fossil fuel projects. One that was recently approved, the Coral Norte gas project in Mozambique, is projected to emit 489m tonnes of CO2 across its lifecycle. At the same time, South Korea has emerged as one of the world's top importers of Russian fossil fuels, even as other nations cut ties. 'This financing directly contradicts [South] Korea's climate targets and makes a mockery of the Paris Agreement,' says Dongjae Oh, the head of the gas team at Solutions for Our Climate (SFOC). 'It exposes the country's hypocrisy – adopting climate targets at home while funding climate destruction abroad.' Even climate-friendly institutions continue backing fossil fuels. The National Pension Service (NPS), one of the world's largest pension funds, remains a major investor in coal and gas projects, despite a 2021 'coal-free' declaration. Three and a half years after this announcement, NPS only finalised its coal divestment strategy in December 2024, with a timeline that will delay implementation for domestic assets until 2030. Meanwhile, South Korea's market-based climate policies have failed to drive meaningful change. The emissions trading scheme (K-ETS) was supposed to put a price on carbon when it launched in 2015. But the system, which hands out free allowances to the largest companies, has instead created perverse incentives, according to campaign group Plan 1.5. The group carried out an analysis and found that South Korea's 10 largest polluters have made over 475bn won (£258bn) from selling unused carbon credits between 2015 and 2022. The system that was meant to make polluters pay has instead rewarded them. Next generation fights back There is growing awareness of a climate crisis as the country begins to experience increasingly severe weather. In 2023 46 people died in floods that displaced thousands. More recently, torrential rains have again caused at least 26 deaths, followed by a record-breaking heatwave. In March this year devastating wildfires swept across more than 48,000 hectares (118,610 acres) – roughly 80% of the area of Seoul – killing 31 people and destroying thousands of homes. The country's disaster chief described the situation as 'a climate crisis unlike anything we've experienced before'. The prime minister, Kim Min-seok, has described the climate crisis as 'the new normal'. Now a new generation of South Koreans is challenging the status quo through legal action. In February, a group of children gathered outside Posco's office in Seoul. Among them was 11-year-old Yoohyun Kim, the youngest plaintiff in a groundbreaking lawsuit against Posco. The case aims to block the company's plan to reline an old coal-fired blast furnace, a move that would extend its life by 15 years and emit an estimated 137m tonnes of CO2. 'I came here during my precious winter break, my last as an elementary school student, because I want to protect all four seasons,' Yoohyun told supporters. 'Spring and autumn are disappearing with climate change – and with them, the chance for children like me to play freely outside.' The lawsuit is the first of its kind globally to target traditional blast furnace production. It follows a crucial ruling by South Korea's constitutional court last August which found that the government's climate policies violated the rights of future generations by failing to set legally binding targets for 2031-50. In March, residents and activists filed another suit over the government's approval of the world's largest semiconductor cluster in Yongin, backed by a 360tn won (£195bn) Samsung investment. The suit argues that the project's 10GW electricity demand and new LNG plants contradict climate regulations and corporate sustainability commitments. Kim Jeongduk, an activist from Political Mamas who participated in protests against the Samcheok Blue plant with her child, sees this as a generational struggle. 'Growing up in Pohang, I saw smokestacks fill the sky on my way to school every day. My throat would hurt from fine dust, and iron particles would collect on our windowsills,' she recalls. 'Adults always said: 'Thanks to Posco, our region survives.' I don't want my child to grow up with that same false choice between a healthy environment and economic survival.' The international data shows that South Korea's emissions peaked in 2018, and have been falling, with a brief jump after Covid, ever since. The government maintains that it is making progress on its climate goals, although critics argue that it is relying on some wonky calculations around its 2030 emission reduction target, confusing net with gross emissions. 'South Korea is actively pursuing bold reduction of coal power generation through prohibiting new permits for coal power plants and phasing out ageing facilities,' the ministry said in a statement, arguing that any remaining coal plants operating beyond 2050, such as those approved before the 2021 ban, would be addressed through 'carbon capture and storage technology and clean fuel conversion' in a way 'not inconsistent with our carbon neutrality commitment'. But independent analysis suggests these measures fall well short. 'The Basic Plan has no specific plan for how to expand renewable energy,' says Prof Park. 'There are vague targets, but no timeline, no locations. In stark contrast, the nuclear roadmap is extremely detailed and specific.' His recent research using the Global Change Assessment Model shows the current plan would fall short of meeting South Korea's 2030 emissions targets by approximately 6-7%. A more ambitious policy focused on offshore wind expansion and a complete phase-out of coal by 2035 could not only meet climate goals but reduce power sector emissions by 82% by 2035. When confronted with criticisms of its emissions accounting, South Korea's environment ministry defended its approach: 'Our emissions reduction target calculation method considers international regulations and major country cases. Countries like Japan and Canada use similar calculation methods for their 2030 NDCs,' a spokesperson said. The ministry added that although previous targets used the older 1996 IPCC guidelines, from 2024 they have begun using the updated 2006 standards for national greenhouse gas statistics. Back in Samcheok, Eunbin Kang looks out at the coal plant that now dominates the coastal landscape. 'I dream of a society where exploitation and plunder are replaced by decentralisation and autonomy,' she says. 'I want to contribute to spreading lifestyles and policies that allow everyone to lead a good life without requiring a lot of electricity or money.'
The Guardian
21 hours ago
- The Guardian
‘A structural dependence on heavy industry': can South Korea wean itself off fossil fuels?
GDP per capita per annum: US$34,640 (global average $14,210) Total annual tonnes CO2: 577.42.m (tenth highest country) CO2 per capita: 11.16 metric tonnes (global average 4.7) Most recent NDC (carbon plan): 2021 Climate plans: highly insufficient On a cool early morning on South Korea's east coast, Eunbin Kang pointed to a monument to a vanishing era. The 2.1GW Samcheok Blue power plant which came online in South Korea in January looms out of the headlands above a beach made internationally famous by a K-pop album shoot. It is expected to emit 13m tonnes of CO2 annually, while its lifespan could stretch beyond 2050, the year by which the country has pledged to reach carbon neutrality. The country was building coal-fired power plants, said Kang, an activist who heads the Youth Climate Emergency Action group and relocated to this city to oppose the facility, 'even as the climate emergency demands an immediate halt to fossil fuel expansion'. But Samcheok is not an outlier. It is a symbol of the stark climate contradiction at the heart of the world's 12th largest economy, celebrated for its technological prowess in semiconductors and electric vehicle batteries, yet among the top ten worst global climate performers. Despite South Korea's impressive climate pledges to reach net zero by 2050 with a 40% reduction in emissions from 2018 levels by 2030, fossil fuels still dominate its energy mix: 60% of electricity comes from coal and gas, while renewables make up just 9%, a quarter of the OECD average of 34%. Monopoly strangling transition At the heart of South Korea's climate failure is an energy model based on a state monopoly and central planning. Korea Electric Power Corporation (Kepco), the state-owned energy company, controls transmission, distribution and retail, while its subsidiaries dominate generation, creating structural challenges for competitors. These include Korea South-East Power, Korea Western Power and four other generation subsidiaries that together operate the vast majority of the country's coal, gas and nuclear power plants. Meanwhile, renewable energy developers face an obstacle course of regulatory barriers. Until recently, windfarm developers had to obtain 28 different permits from multiple ministries in a bureaucratic maze which created years of delays and significantly increased project costs, making many otherwise viable developments financially unfeasible. Progress was made in early 2025 with the passage of a long-awaited bill aimed at streamlining approvals, although the law won't take effect until 2026. Grid connection remains another hurdle. While electricity demand has grown by 98% over the past two decades, the transmission network has expanded by just 26%, but attempts to expand the grid have led to bitter local conflicts. In Miryang, South Gyeongsang province, the government tried to compel residents to sell up to clear space for transmission towers and people faced violent crackdowns during a six-year standoff. Currently, a dozen such projects are stalled in the country. In February 2025, the National Assembly passed a Power Grid Special Act aimed at expanding transmission. But civic groups warn the law reinforces the country's decades-old top-down model of infrastructure development, removing what few safeguards remained around public consultation and environmental review. 'We fully acknowledge that renewable energy transition requires transmission lines,' says Kim Jeong-jin from Friends of the Earth in Dangjin, where one project faced more than 10 years of delays due to local opposition. 'But the repeated conflicts arise because the electricity is not even for local use, yet it causes damage to our region without any regard for our voices.' The country's energy strategy is guided by the Basic Plan for Electricity Supply and Demand, a 15-year forecast revised every two years. But the framework, which dates back to the 1960s, still prioritises centralised, large-scale power generation – a model built for coal and nuclear, and fundamentally incompatible with today's decentralised, flexible renewable technologies. Political volatility worsens the problem. Each five-year presidential term brings a policy reversal. For instance, in 2017, President Moon Jae-in announced a nuclear phase-out; his successor, the now disgraced ex-president Yoon Suk Yeol, reversed course five years later. This whiplash undermines any long-term planning for renewables – a problem faced by democracies around the world. The consequences are stark. After Russia's invasion of Ukraine sent fossil fuel prices soaring, Kepco incurred enormous losses. In 2022 alone, South Korea faced an extra 22tn won (£11.9 bn) in LNG power costs. Yet the government kept electricity prices artificially low, a political choice that pushed Kepco's debt to a staggering 205tn won (£111bn) by 2024. Despite this crisis, meaningful reform remains elusive. This entrenched monopoly system has effectively blocked the clean energy transition, with independent renewable producers struggling to gain meaningful access to a market dominated by fossil fuel interests. Carbon-intensive by design More broadly, South Korea's postwar rise relied on energy-intensive industries: steel, petrochemicals, shipbuilding and semiconductors. 'This structural dependency on heavy and chemical industries makes the energy transition extraordinarily difficult,' says Park Sangin, a professor of economics at Seoul National University. 'These industries are deeply embedded in the country's economic fabric and require vast amounts of stable, cheap electricity.' Powerful chaebols, or family-controlled conglomerates like Posco, Samsung and Hyundai, exert outsized influence on national policy. Their operations are supported by an electricity market designed for industrial stability, not climate mitigation. And the problem isn't just domestic; South Korea also finances and provides the infrastructure for fossil fuels globally. South Korean shipbuilders dominate the global market for LNG carriers. Public financial institutions also bankroll overseas fossil fuel projects. One that was recently approved, the Coral Norte gas project in Mozambique, is projected to emit 489m tonnes of CO2 across its lifecycle. At the same time, South Korea has emerged as one of the world's top importers of Russian fossil fuels, even as other nations cut ties. 'This financing directly contradicts [South] Korea's climate targets and makes a mockery of the Paris Agreement,' says Dongjae Oh, the head of the gas team at Solutions for Our Climate (SFOC). 'It exposes the country's hypocrisy – adopting climate targets at home while funding climate destruction abroad.' Even climate-friendly institutions continue backing fossil fuels. The National Pension Service (NPS), one of the world's largest pension funds, remains a major investor in coal and gas projects, despite a 2021 'coal-free' declaration. Three and a half years after this announcement, NPS only finalised its coal divestment strategy in December 2024, with a timeline that will delay implementation for domestic assets until 2030. Meanwhile, South Korea's market-based climate policies have failed to drive meaningful change. The emissions trading scheme (K-ETS) was supposed to put a price on carbon when it launched in 2015. But the system, which hands out free allowances to the largest companies, has instead created perverse incentives, according to campaign group Plan 1.5. The group carried out an analysis and found that South Korea's 10 largest polluters have made over 475bn won (£258bn) from selling unused carbon credits between 2015 and 2022. The system that was meant to make polluters pay has instead rewarded them. Next generation fights back There is growing awareness of a climate crisis as the country begins to experience increasingly severe weather. In 2023 46 people died in floods that displaced thousands. More recently, torrential rains have again caused at least 26 deaths, followed by a record-breaking heatwave. In March this year devastating wildfires swept across more than 48,000 hectares (118,610 acres) – roughly 80% of the area of Seoul – killing 31 people and destroying thousands of homes. The country's disaster chief described the situation as 'a climate crisis unlike anything we've experienced before'. The prime minister, Kim Min-seok, has described the climate crisis as 'the new normal'. Now a new generation of South Koreans is challenging the status quo through legal action. In February, a group of children gathered outside Posco's office in Seoul. Among them was 11-year-old Yoohyun Kim, the youngest plaintiff in a groundbreaking lawsuit against Posco. The case aims to block the company's plan to reline an old coal-fired blast furnace, a move that would extend its life by 15 years and emit an estimated 137m tonnes of CO2. 'I came here during my precious winter break, my last as an elementary school student, because I want to protect all four seasons,' Yoohyun told supporters. 'Spring and autumn are disappearing with climate change – and with them, the chance for children like me to play freely outside.' The lawsuit is the first of its kind globally to target traditional blast furnace production. It follows a crucial ruling by South Korea's constitutional court last August which found that the government's climate policies violated the rights of future generations by failing to set legally binding targets for 2031-50. In March, residents and activists filed another suit over the government's approval of the world's largest semiconductor cluster in Yongin, backed by a 360tn won (£195bn) Samsung investment. The suit argues that the project's 10GW electricity demand and new LNG plants contradict climate regulations and corporate sustainability commitments. Kim Jeongduk, an activist from Political Mamas who participated in protests against the Samcheok Blue plant with her child, sees this as a generational struggle. 'Growing up in Pohang, I saw smokestacks fill the sky on my way to school every day. My throat would hurt from fine dust, and iron particles would collect on our windowsills,' she recalls. 'Adults always said: 'Thanks to Posco, our region survives.' I don't want my child to grow up with that same false choice between a healthy environment and economic survival.' The international data shows that South Korea's emissions peaked in 2018, and have been falling, with a brief jump after Covid, ever since. The government maintains that it is making progress on its climate goals, although critics argue that it is relying on some wonky calculations around its 2030 emission reduction target, confusing net with gross emissions. 'South Korea is actively pursuing bold reduction of coal power generation through prohibiting new permits for coal power plants and phasing out ageing facilities,' the ministry said in a statement, arguing that any remaining coal plants operating beyond 2050, such as those approved before the 2021 ban, would be addressed through 'carbon capture and storage technology and clean fuel conversion' in a way 'not inconsistent with our carbon neutrality commitment'. But independent analysis suggests these measures fall well short. 'The Basic Plan has no specific plan for how to expand renewable energy,' says Prof Park. 'There are vague targets, but no timeline, no locations. In stark contrast, the nuclear roadmap is extremely detailed and specific.' His recent research using the Global Change Assessment Model shows the current plan would fall short of meeting South Korea's 2030 emissions targets by approximately 6-7%. A more ambitious policy focused on offshore wind expansion and a complete phase-out of coal by 2035 could not only meet climate goals but reduce power sector emissions by 82% by 2035. When confronted with criticisms of its emissions accounting, South Korea's environment ministry defended its approach: 'Our emissions reduction target calculation method considers international regulations and major country cases. Countries like Japan and Canada use similar calculation methods for their 2030 NDCs,' a spokesperson said. The ministry added that although previous targets used the older 1996 IPCC guidelines, from 2024 they have begun using the updated 2006 standards for national greenhouse gas statistics. Back in Samcheok, Eunbin Kang looks out at the coal plant that now dominates the coastal landscape. 'I dream of a society where exploitation and plunder are replaced by decentralisation and autonomy,' she says. 'I want to contribute to spreading lifestyles and policies that allow everyone to lead a good life without requiring a lot of electricity or money.'
Reuters
2 days ago
- Reuters
South Korea criticises Japanese officials' visit to Tokyo war shrine
SEOUL, Aug 15 (Reuters) - The South Korean government expressed "deep disappointment and regret" over Japanese officials visiting a Tokyo war shrine on Friday and said future relations must be built on Japan showing remorse for past wrongs, its foreign ministry said. Japan marked the 80th anniversary of its World War Two defeat on Friday, with at least one cabinet minister joining thousands of visitors at Yasukuni Shrine, which South Korea said in a statement "glorifies Japan's war of aggression and enshrines war criminals." The South Korean government urged the leaders of Japan to face history and demonstrate "humble reflection and sincere remorse" for Japan's past history, the ministry statement said. "This is an important foundation for the development of future-oriented relations between the two countries based on mutual trust," it said. South Korean President Lee Jae Myung is due to visit Japan on August 23-24 and hold a summit with Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba. Lee has in the past been critical of efforts by administrations in Seoul to improve ties with Japan, which occupied the Korean peninsula from 1910 to 1945. He has since vowed to continue efforts to strengthen cooperation with Japan and the United States.
