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S. Korea to Withdraw All Retaliatory Measures Against Japan
Following the S. Korea-Japan summit talks, the S. Korean government announced Tuesday it was withdrawing retaliatory measures over the publication of a distorted history textbook.
As a result, the country will allow the entrance of Japanese pop culture and resume military collaboration. In addition, Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade Han Seung-su will visit Tokyo in November, and the third round of inter-parliamentary meetings, which had been delayed indefinitely, will be held by the end of this year.
According to high-ranking government officials, relations between the two nations are now entering into ¡°the final chapter of perfect normalization¡± and all exchanges, stopped for four months, will resume. They added that Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi announced his country is positive on the re-start of importing pork from Korea worth of US$300million, which had been stopped due to a foot and mouth disease outbreak, and the government was accelerating the deal.
However, the S. Korean government is expecting to hold a meeting on the distorted history textbook with related ministers attending on October 18.
In preparations for the 2002 Korea-Japan World Cup, it will hold the ninth round of meetings for Korea-Japan culture exchange, which had also been postponed, and discuss measures for accelerating business in culture. At the same time, the government will lay the groundwork for the building of a joint history research institute, and will settle the ¡®saury dispute¡¯ in talks between the two nations¡¯ foreign ministers.
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