TOKYO (AFP) — South Korea's new President Lee Myung-Bak sought Monday to turn the page in troubled relations with Japan, pledging to cooperate over North Korea and to avoid "knee-jerk" reactions over the past.
Lee is the first South Korean leader to visit the neighbouring country in more than three years amid lingering bitterness over Japan's 1910-1945 rule over the Korean peninsula.
"Of course, we cannot forget about the past when we think about relations between Japan and South Korea. But we must not let the past hamper moves towards the future," Lee said after talks with Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda.
The two leaders decided to restart a plan for "shuttle diplomacy" of two summits a year and to step up exchanges of young people, including through a new working holiday plan, according to a joint statement.
"Prime Minister Fukuda and I have resolved to affirm a strong bilateral relationship, like a tree with roots that go deep underground and can withstand a strong storm," Lee told the joint press conference.
He also said he would welcome a visit by Emperor Akihito, which would be the first by a Japanese royal to the Korean peninsula since independence.
Akihito visited China, also a victim of Japan's wartime aggression, in October 1992, when he said he "deeply deplored" his country's actions.
Lee's left-leaning predecessor, Roh Moo-Hyun, refused to visit Japan after December 2004 in anger over then prime minister Junichiro Koizumi's visits to a shrine that venerates Japanese war dead, including war criminals.
In apparent reference to the Yasukuni shrine row, Lee said: "I don't think we need a knee-jerk reaction every time a politician takes individual action. Politicians can express their opinions in every country."
Lee is on the second leg of his first foreign trip as president that earlier took him to the United States, which also had uneasy relations with Roh, particularly over North Korea.
But Lee has pledged to take a tougher line in North Korea after ending a decade by liberal leaders in Seoul who stressed reconciliation with their impoverished communist neighbour.
Japan has tense relations with North Korea, in part due to a dispute over Pyongyang's kidnappings of Japanese civilians in the 1970s and 1980s.
Fukuda said that Lee understood the Japanese position.
"I felt encouraged. I believe Japan and South Korea will be able to cooperate more closely than ever," Fukuda said.
"North Korea is the greatest challenge for both Japan and South Korea," Fukuda said. "We reconfirmed the necessity of demanding that North Korea submit a comprehensive and correct declaration."
North Korea missed a deadline under a six-nation disarmament deal to declare all its nuclear programmes by the end of 2007.
US officials have said Washington was adjusting its demands in a bid to break the stalemate, amid reports North Korea would acknowledge US allegations that it secretly enriched uranium and shipped nuclear technology to Syria.
Lee said he and Fukuda considered North Korea's nuclear programme "a threat not only to the Korean peninsula but to Northeast Asia."
"We exchanged views on how we can resolve the issue peacefully through the six-party process," Lee said.
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