Jakarta, CNN Indonesia —
President South Korea, Moon Jae-in, canceled the planned meeting with the Prime Minister Japan, Yoshihide Suga, after a Sakura State diplomat made inappropriate comments.
“President Moon has decided not to visit Japan,” South Korean presidential spokesman Moon Park Soo-hyun was quoted as saying. Reuters, Monday (19/7).
With this decision, Moon certainly will not attend the opening of the Tokyo Olympics. Initially, Moon was scheduled to attend to improve relations with South Korea.
Park said that the two sides were actually looking for ways to resolve the dispute and enhance cooperation. However, they failed to reach an agreement.
The announcement came after South Korea protested that a diplomat at the Japanese embassy in Seoul called Moon “masturbating” when describing relations between the two countries.
So far, Suga has refused to comment on Moon’s decision. However, he called the diplomat’s statement inappropriate.
The senior diplomat at the Japanese Embassy in Seoul reportedly mocked Moon’s desire to meet with Suga.
In interviews with Japanese media, the diplomat described Moon’s desire to meet Suga as “masturbating with himself.”
In a separate interview with a South Korean news portal, JTBC, the unnamed senior Japanese diplomat said Moon’s wishes were in vain because Japan “has no room to pay attention to Seoul-Tokyo relations” at the moment.
As reported AFPRecently, Japan’s Ambassador to South Korea, Koichi Aiboshi, said that his deputy, Hirohisa Soma, had made the “grossly inappropriate” statement.
However, Aiboshi did not explain his deputy’s inappropriate statement.
“While it is true that such a term was used during the conversation, it was not addressed to President Moon. I have strongly warned Deputy Ambassador Soma,” Aiboshi said in a statement.
South Korea and Japan are actually the two main allies of the United States in Asia. However, Tokyo-Seoul relations tend to be cold and dynamic, one of which is the issue of victims of sex slavery during the Japanese colonial period.
At a press conference in early July, Suga reportedly admitted that relations with South Korea were “very difficult” because of the wartime past. However, he is said to have left it to South Korea to respond to this issue.
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