Media blasts Japan-S.Korea meet as 'gloomy' summit
(Agencies)
Updated: 2005-06-21 17:23

A day after Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi and South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun met in Seoul to repair frayed ties, newspapers in both countries criticized the summit as disappointing and one called it "gloomy."

Newspapers in Japan and South Korea said on Tuesday little was achieved except possibly to halt a further slide in relations.

"It was an extremely gloomy summit," the liberal Asahi Shimbun newspaper said in Japan. "It was clear that the gap between the two leaders was too deep and they were unable to bridge it in the talks."

Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi (L) and South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun smile during a joint news conference at the presidential Blue House in Seoul June 20, 2005. Koizumi arrived in Seoul on Monday for a meeting with Roh to try to patch up ties frayed by disputes over their countries' bitter history. [Reuters]

Seoul is angry at what it sees as Tokyo's failure to face up to its militarism during World War II, symbolized by Koizumi's annual visits to a shrine for Japanese war dead as well as perceived lapses in a school history textbook in Japan.

"By most signs, the two leaders met to prevent bilateral relations from spiraling out of control, in which they succeeded," said the Korea Times. "But historical conflict is a drawn-out war and cannot be resolved in a single meeting."

Roh told Koizumi that the Japanese leader's visit to Tokyo's Yasukuni Shrine, where some convicted war criminals are honored along with other Japanese war dead, constitute the "very heart" of the history dispute, according to a Japanese official.

Koizumi said he understood Roh wanted him to stop the visits, but said he goes to the shrine to show respect for the war dead and to vow never again to wage a war.

Roh said Koizumi had said he would consider a new war memorial without the historical baggage but Japanese officials said there was no agreement to build such a facility.

"We want to see if it should be built," Japan's top government spokesman Hiroyuki Hosoda told a news conference, adding that strong public backing of the idea was necessary, but lacking at the moment.

A survey released by Nippon Television on Tuesday showed that 41.1 percent of Japanese voters were in favor of building the new secular memorial, while 45.4 percent were against.

"There isn't a clear majority saying it should be built. We need to listen to various views," Hosoda said.

Besides Yasukuni, Tokyo and Seoul have a series of disputes stemming from their past, including a row over the ownership of a pair of rocky islets and over a Japanese history textbook that South Korea says whitewashes Japan's wartime atrocities and its 1910-1945 colonial rule over Korea.

But the two sides agreed to continue the twice-a-year "shuttle summits" and to hold a meeting in Japan by the end of the year.

"At least they agreed on continuing dialogue," wrote Japanese financial daily the Nihon Keizai Shimbun.

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