日 경제보복에 외교부, 나가미네 日대사 초치
The diplomatic tug-of-war between Seoul and Tokyo... appears to be spilling over to the trade front.
Following Japan's move to curb high-tech material exports to South Korea,... Seoul summoned the country's ambassador to lodge a formal complaint.
Lee Ji-won has our top story.
South Korea's foreign ministry summoned the Japanese ambassador to South Korea, Yasumasa Nagamine, to lodge a formal complaint Monday afternoon over Tokyo's decision to retailiate against Seoul economically for its courts' rulings on forced labor.
Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs, Cho Sei-young, reportedly expressed serious concerns and regret to Nagamine over the move's potentialy negative impacts on South Korean industry and on bilateral ties.
Cho also said the move goes against the spirit of free trade and urged Japan to take back the restrictions.
The measures were announced earlier in the day by Japan's trade ministry, which said that starting from Thursday,... bulk licenses to export high-tech material used in smartphones and chips to South Korea will no longer be valid, meaning it'll be harder for South Korea to buy those products.
The restricted items are fluorine polyimide, which is used as a liquid crystal display component in TVs and smartphones,... and resists and etching gas used in making semiconductors.
Japan said it will also work to get South Korea taken off the list of so-called "white countries" recognized for having minimum restrictions on trade.
It was doing so because, it claimed, "trust between the two sides has been significantly undermined."
Tokyo had threatened Seoul with such measures numerous times, but this is the first it has actually taken them.
Based on Tokyo's past statement, the sanctions are apparently in retaliation for the South Korean Supreme Court's decision last year to order Japanese companies, including Nippon Steel & Sumitomo Metal Corporation, to compensate the Koreans used for forced labor when Korea was under Japanese colonial rule.
Japan has been insisting that it had already paid compensation when the two sides normalized their ties in 1965, but Seoul's top court said the bilateral agreement between the two governments does not take away individual rights to reparations.
After months without action from the Japanese side, Seoul's top court froze the Japanese firms' assets in South Korea and is waiting for a response from the firms before selling them off.
"Japan's Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretary says the restrictions are not retaliatory,... but international and even some Japanese media say they're a step too far,... and that they directly contradict the Osaka Declaration agreed at the G20 summit just last week,... which advocates free and fair trade.
Lee Ji-won, Arirang News."
