The nonbinding ordinances in South Korea will allow Japanese companies including Mitsubishi Heavy Industries to be openly linked to their wartime pasts. Disputes over wartime history and trade policy have started creeping into other areas as the bilateral relationship sinks to its lowest level in years. The municipal government of Busan, in southern South Korea, said Sunday it will suspend administrative exchange programs with Japan pending an improvement of relations between the two countries after Japan tightened its export controls on items to South Korea.
The city said it will also A controversial statue erected close to the Japanese Consulate in Busan to symbolize Korean laborers forcibly taken to Japan during the colonial era is removed. A statue symbolizing forced Korean workers taken to Japan during its colonial rule may be erected Tuesday in front of the Japanese Consulate General in Busan, South Korea's second-largest city.
The Japanese government has told Seoul that it is opposed to such moves, and the Yasuhiro Morimoto, the Japanese consul general in Busan, was replaced Thursday after an unusually short term of about one year in which he was temporarily recalled from South Korea amid diplomatic friction involving the "comfort women" issue, the Foreign Ministry said.
Consuls general usually serve The South Korean Foreign Ministry has sent an official letter to a district office in Busan asking that a contentious statue symbolizing the women forced into Imperial Japanese military brothels before and during the war be removed from its spot outside the Japanese Consulate, Former U. The head of the pro-Seoul Korean Residents Union in Japan said Thursday his group favors removing the statue in Busan dedicated to women forced to work in Japan's wartime military brothels.
South Korea expressed regret Friday about Japan recalling its ambassador over the new "comfort women" statue in Busan, and Foreign Minister Yun Byung-se summoned the envoy to discuss the matter.
