South Korean Foreign Minister Park Jin strives to resolve the forced labor and comfort women issue - What does the Korean economy, where the won continues to be weak, demand from Japan?

Photo by Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan (licensed under CC BY 4.0)

South Korean Foreign Minister Park, who is visiting Japan, emphasized that regarding the issue of labor recruitment lawsuits, ``We are making efforts within South Korea to find a desirable solution before cashing out,'' and added, ``The Japanese side also responded with a sincere response.'' I would appreciate it if you could give me that."

Mr. Nukaga, who met with him after the meeting, told reporters that he "intended to respect" the ２０１５ comfort women agreement that confirmed the "final and irreversible resolution" of the comfort women issue. I made it.

The current Yun Seok-Yue administration appears to be eager to repair relations with Japan. Before he took office as president, he sent a delegation of members of Congress to express his sincerity, and after taking office, the Minister of Foreign Affairs has shown an attitude of fully accepting the intentions of the Japanese side. But don't let your guard down.

The South Korean government's approach so far has been to extract some kind of concession from Japan, take it as a diplomatic credit, and then try to make a temporary move, and the pattern is to come back to it again and again.

Japan should negotiate without losing its stance that there is nothing Japan can do. In reality, the issue of post-war compensation has already been resolved in all agreements between Japan and South Korea.

The Korean won continues to be at a low price with no signs of rising. Due to the impact of interest rate hikes and the Bank of Korea trying to recover the won spent during the coronavirus pandemic, corporate investment will slow down. Since the won is not depreciating as sharply as before, it seems that the price is not falling off a cliff and is managing to cope even with the price dropping to around １,３００ won.

The US Federal Reserve has also begun withdrawing dollars from the market and raising interest rates. The Korean government wants to carry out another swap and looks at the American expression, but its expression remains firm. That's why it's Japan. I would like to somehow conclude a swap with the key currency to provide peace of mind.

Although South Korea has experienced economic growth, its industrial structure is a chaebol economy that generates profits through processing trade through bulk purchases and bulk sales, so domestic demand never grows, and it is greatly affected by exchange rate fluctuations. The national debt is increasing, household debt has exceeded GDP, and land prices in Seoul continue to soar, making it difficult to see when they will rebound. There is nothing wrong with the fact that Won is vulnerable.

The Japan-Korea issue is not just about the forced labor issue or the comfort women issue. In addition to the Takeshima issue, South Korea has broken all of the agreements that Japan and South Korea have concluded to date. The Japan-Korea joint declaration was left blank. The issue of excluding countries from the White List stems from concerns about the transfer of funds to North Korea and third countries.

Just because the issue of forced labor, which is about to be turned into cash, and the issue of comfort women, where statues of comfort women are being erected all over the world, are recent issues, it is normalization because these two issues have been resolved. Would you? In the first place, when South Korea refers to normalization, it means that they want to go back to the days when they were given special treatment.

Why did South Korea become a white country? Why did Japan do swaps during two economic collapses? This is only because Korea was given special treatment. It should be made clear that there will never again be a time when relations are treated as special even though they have been normalized.