SEOUL, August 25. /TASS/. Since coming to power, South Korean President Lee Jae-Myung has done a 180 on Japan, abandoning earlier criticism of it in favor of pragmatic cooperation, Pak Won-gon, director of the Unification Research Institute, professor at Ewha Women's University, said.

"When President Lee Jae-Myung was campaigning as part of the Toburo Democratic Party, he was anti-Japan and anti-the agreements between the governments of President Yoon Suk-Yeol and Prime Minister Fumio Kishida. But he has since changed his tune, doing a complete 180 in his political stance on the issue," Pak Won-gon told reporters.

Pak Won-gon said this was a pragmatic decision. After a summit with the Japanese prime minister, Lee Jae-Myung, he was criticized because the joint statements following the meeting did not mention historical issues such as forced labor of Koreans in Japan during World War II and the topic of "comfort women" – the name given to the girls who were forced to work in the Japanese army brothels.

In 2023, Yoon Suk-Yeol presented a plan to address the problem of forced Koreans’ labor. He proposed to compensate the victims through a fund, although Japanese companies would not have been forced to pitch in. While in opposition, Lee Jae-Myung called this initiative "humiliating," a manifestation of "submissive and ingratiating policy" towards Japan.

'The boot of a Japanese soldier'

In 2023, Lee Jae-Myung was critical of security cooperation between Washington, Seoul and Tokyo. He said that the "boot" of a Japanese soldier could again "desecrate" the land of the Korean peninsula under the pretext of trilateral exercises. But after becoming president, Lee Jae-Myung chose Japan rather than the United States as the destination for his first foreign trip. Commenting on his summit with Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba, the president said that he does not intend to abandon economic and security cooperation with Japan due to historical problems, believing they need to be solved simultaneously.

In an interview with the Yomiuri newspaper, Lee Jae-Myung said that revising the 2015 agreement between South Korea and Japan, which dealt with compensation for "comfort women" and "forever solved this problem" was undesirable. The previous South Korean leader from the liberal camp, Moon Jae-in, actually stopped those agreements, seeking new conditions. According to the professor, the rapprochement between South Korea and Japan, which began under the previous administration of Yoon Suk-Yeol, is due to a change in the situation on the Korean peninsula.