Leaders of South Korea and Japan Meet in New York: Korea Calls It an Informal Summit, Japan, a Chat

President Yoon Suk-yeol and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida greet each other before engaging in informal talks at a conference hall in New York on September 21 (local time). Yonhap News

President Yoon Suk-yeol and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida met in New York on September 21 (local time). The South Korean government described the meeting as an informal summit, while the Japanese government called it a brief chat.

This day, the two leaders met and talked for about half an hour in a conference building near the UN General Assembly in Manhattan. In a written briefing after the meeting, the Office of the President said, “The two state leaders agreed on the need to resolve pending issues to improve the relationship between the two countries and decided to instruct foreign ministries to accelerate talks and continue discussions.”

According to Kyodo News, the Japanese government also announced that it had reached an agreement with South Korea to speed up discussions between the two foreign ministries to resolve pending issues including problems of wartime labor, but instead of referring to the meeting as a summit, the Japanese government called it a chat.

This seems to reflect the Japanese government’s opinion that the event was not a formal meeting to discuss agenda set prior to the talks. Previously on September 15, when the presidential office of South Korea announced that it had agreed to hold a summit with Japan at the time of the UN General Assembly and that discussions were in progress to set the specific time, the Asahi Shimbun reported that Prime Minister Kishida expressed discontent claiming he would do the opposite and refuse such talks.

The Japanese government may have referred to the talks as a chat instead of a summit to prevent people from exaggerating the significance of the meeting. A Japanese government official who was present during the talks said, “It was a serious match. President Yoon had more to say,” and conveyed the atmosphere, according to the coverage by JNN, a news network run by Japan’s TBS.