New South Korean President Lee Myung-bak called for better relations with former colonial ruler Japan yesterday, saying his nation should look to the future instead of dwelling too much on the past.
Lee's address, made at a ceremony marking Korea's 1919 uprising for independence, contrasted with speeches his predecessor Roh Moo-hyun gave on the holiday in recent years, in which he criticized Tokyo for not living up to its repeated apologies.
Lee's speech included no criticism of Japan and no demand for a new apology.
PHOTO: AFP
"South Korea and Japan should build a future-oriented relationship in a pragmatic attitude," Lee said in the nationally televised address. "We should never look away from the truth of history. However, we cannot give up on future relations, bound by the past forever."
On March 1, 1919, hundreds of thousands of Koreans rose up against Japan and demanded independence. Hundreds of people were killed or wounded. The uprising is commemorated in both Koreas, although the anniversary is not a national holiday in the North.
Lee, who assumed office on Monday, has said since his December election that improving relations with the US and Japan would be one of his foreign policy priorities, saying ties with the two countries had frayed under his predecessor.
On the day of his inauguration, Lee held a summit with Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda and agreed to hold regular summits with Japan and consider reviving talks to tear down trade barriers between the two nations.
South Korea and Japan are key trade partners but have sparred over rows stemming largely from Japan's 1910 to 1945 colonial rule of Korea, including repeated visits by Japanese leaders to a war shrine that critics say glorifies the country's wartime atrocities.
Korea was liberated in 1945, at the end of World War II, and was then divided into two. Lee said the division is not only a matter between the two Koreas, but also the international community.
"We cannot resolve the South-North question with exclusive nationalism," he said. "We should view it as an internal issue, but at the same time as an international issue as well."
North Korea has long called for Seoul and Pyongyang to resolve the problems on the Korean peninsula alone, and the North's state-run Rodong Sinmun newspaper reiterated that sentiment yesterday in an editorial marking the uprising anniversary.
"We should never allow any foreign force to intervene" in efforts to unify the peninsula, it said in a report carried by the North's Korean Central News Agency.
Lee, who took office with a promise to boost the economy, also emphasized that South Korea should be forward-looking and pragmatic amid stiff international competition.
"We have too many things to do to remain looking back," he said.
People with missing teeth might be able to grow new ones, said Japanese dentists, who are testing a pioneering drug they hope will offer an alternative to dentures and implants. Unlike reptiles and fish, which usually replace their fangs on a regular basis, it is widely accepted that humans and most other mammals only grow two sets of teeth. However, hidden underneath our gums are the dormant buds of a third generation, said Katsu Takahashi, head of oral surgery at the Medical Research Institute Kitano Hospital in Osaka, Japan. His team launched clinical trials at Kyoto University Hospital in October, administering an experimental
IVY LEAGUE GRADUATE: Suspect Luigi Nicholas Mangione, whose grandfather was a self-made real-estate developer and philanthropist, had a life of privilege The man charged with murder in the killing of the CEO of UnitedHealthcare made it clear he was not going to make things easy on authorities, shouting unintelligibly and writhing in the grip of sheriff’s deputies as he was led into court and then objecting to being brought to New York to face trial. The displays of resistance on Tuesday were not expected to significantly delay legal proceedings for Luigi Nicholas Mangione, who was charged in last week’s Manhattan killing of Brian Thompson, the leader of the US’ largest medical insurance company. Little new information has come out about motivation,
‘MONSTROUS CRIME’: The killings were overseen by a powerful gang leader who was convinced his son’s illness was caused by voodoo practitioners, a civil organization said Nearly 200 people in Haiti were killed in brutal weekend violence reportedly orchestrated against voodoo practitioners, with the government on Monday condemning a massacre of “unbearable cruelty.” The killings in the capital, Port-au-Prince, were overseen by a powerful gang leader convinced that his son’s illness was caused by followers of the religion, the civil organization the Committee for Peace and Development (CPD) said. It was the latest act of extreme violence by powerful gangs that control most of the capital in the impoverished Caribbean country mired for decades in political instability, natural disasters and other woes. “He decided to cruelly punish all
NOTORIOUS JAIL: Even from a distance, prisoners maimed by torture, weakened by illness and emaciated by hunger, could be distinguished Armed men broke the bolts on the cell and the prisoners crept out: haggard, bewildered and scarcely believing that their years of torment in Syria’s most brutal jail were over. “What has happened?” asked one prisoner after another. “You are free, come out. It is over,” cried the voice of a man filming them on his telephone. “Bashar has gone. We have crushed him.” The dramatic liberation of Saydnaya prison came hours after rebels took the nearby capital, Damascus, having sent former Syrian president Bashar al-Assad fleeing after more than 13 years of civil war. In the video, dozens of
RSS