정부, 일본 수출규제 조치 WTO 분쟁 해결 절차 재개키로
South Korea is going to reopen its complaint at the World Trade Organization over Japan's restrictions of key exports,... a complaint it had suspended last November.
The announcement comes as Japan failed to give a clear response by Seoul's end-of-May deadline.
Our Kim Jae-hee has the details.
South Korea's Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy announced on Tuesday that Seoul will reopen its complaint at the World Trade Organization over Japan's export restrictions.
"The Japanese government has not shown commitment to resolving problems and talks are not making progress. So we have decided to reopen the complaint at the WTO on Japan's export restrictions,... which had been temporarily suspended on November 22nd last year."
Through the WTO proceedings, the trade ministry said it will prove the illegality and injustice of Japan's export restrictions to the international community.
Seoul had previously called for joint efforts from Tokyo to resolve the trade row and overcome the economic fallout from COVID-19,... but as of the end of May, Japan has not given a clear response.
Japan's foreign ministry has responded to Seoul's decision.
"Regarding the export control issues, it is regrettable that South Korea unilaterally announced this when we've been continuing dialogue between export control officials."
The South Korean Supreme Court in 2018 ordered Japanese companies to pay compensation to the Koreans it had forced to work during Japan's colonial rule.
On July 1st, last year, Tokyo retailated by announcing it would impose export curbs on three key materials used for making computer chips and displays.
Japan then removed South Korea from its "whitelist" of trusted countries,... and Seoul in response, decided to terminate its military intel-sharing agreement GSOMIA and filed a complaint over Tokyo's trade curbs at the WTO.
But Seoul later suspended that complaint and put GSOMIA's termination on hold.
Since then, Tokyo partially eased its photoresist export curbs in December and the two countries held 16-hour long video talks in March this year,... but have failed to see any significant progress.
Kim Jae-hee, Arirang News.
