BANDAR SERI BEGAWAN, Brunei ― The foreign ministers of Seoul and Tokyo held their first talks on Monday in an apparent effort to mend bilateral relations strained by historical and territorial feuds.

The 25-minute conversation between Yun Byung-se and Kishida Fumio took place on the sidelines of the ASEAN Regional Forum in Brunei. It is the region’s largest security conference with 27 countries participating, including North Korea, the U.S., China and Russia.

Yun scrapped a trip to Tokyo in April after some Japanese ministers and politicians worshipped at the Yasukuni Shrine honoring top World War II criminals and churned out comments denying the country’s imperial past.

The two ministers discussed ways to ameliorate the two countries’ ties and foster policy coordination on North Korea.

Yun stressed that the Japanese officials’ provocative remarks damaged bilateral relations while Kishida explained Tokyo’s positions on contentious issues.

“Historical issues should be dealt with respectfully and carefully, and (otherwise) the soul of a nation gets hurt,” Yoon said during the meeting.

He added the Korean government seeks to manage bilateral relationship with Japan based on trust and principle and called on Japanese political leaders to work together for the stability and development of ties.

Earlier in the day, Yun, Kishida and U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry also had their first three-way consultation, with Pyongyang’s nuclear programs topping the agenda.

On the day before, Yun, Kishida and Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi gathered for the first time for the ASEAN Plus Three foreign ministers’ meeting here. They initially planned to meet in May ahead of a trilateral summit but called it off amid escalating historical and territorial tensions.

Tokyo is at loggerheads with Seoul and Beijing over sovereignty claims over the Dokdo islets in the East Sea and the Senkaku or Diayou islands in the East China Sea, respectively.

In contrast, Yun has already traveled to Washington and Beijing and held talks with Kerry and Wang twice ― before and after separate summits. The top Korean diplomat met with Wang again for a 50-minute encounter in Brunei on Sunday.

With its strategic “rebalancing” toward Asia, the U.S. has been calling for better ties between its two main allies in the region. One of its principal concerns is that Japan’s rightward shift may deepen its strife with South Korea and China, thus eroding crucial coordination between the members of the six-nation talks aimed at denuclearizing North Korea.

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe raised eyebrows for sending his aide to Pyongyang in May with no prior consultations with either Seoul or Washington. It was apparently designed to reopen talks over Japanese abductees but was not successful in this regard.

Despite burgeoning efforts to bring about a thaw, sources of tension persist between South Korea and Japan as Abe’s Liberal Democratic Party is poised for a sweeping victory for the July upper house election.

The two countries last month decided not to extend a $3 billion bilateral currency swap deal due to expire in July following a months-long war of nerves. Japan’s Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga called it a “political decision.”

During his first premiership in 2006-07, Abe refrained from visiting at the Yasukuni Shrine in consideration of relations with neighbors, a move he later called a “mistake.”

He has also displayed his desire to rewrite the country’s pacifist constitution so as to run a full-fledged military, step up territorial claims and reinterpret a landmark 1993 apology for wartime atrocities.

“The election may embolden the Abe administration to further swing toward the right, which is a concern for us, China, the U.S. and other countries,” another Foreign Ministry official told The Korea Herald, requesting anonymity.

“Domestic politics always has a role in shaping the two countries’ relations, but at the same time they would try not to go too far given rising criticism at home and abroad.”

By Shin Hyon-hee, Korea Herald correspondent
(heeshin@heraldcorp.com)