Political row with S. Korea starts to hurt Japan

TOKYO - Japan's surplus in spending by overseas visitors declined in July from a year earlier as the numbers from South Korea tumbled, a sign the souring bilateral relations are taking a toll on the world's third largest economy.

The travel account surplus - or the amount spent in Japan by foreign visitors minus that by Japanese traveling overseas shrank 0.9 percent in July from a year earlier to 229.3 billion yen ($2.1 billion), current account data by the Japanese Ministry of Finance showed on Monday.

Japan removed South Korea last month from its whitelist of trusted trading partners, which are given preferential export procedures. In response, Seoul dropped Tokyo off its whitelist of trusted export partners.