Archive
World Ch. Schedule : FRI 20:30 KST
* Date : 2019-11-07
South Korea and Japan are still engaged in a bilateral conflict as the expiry date for GSOMIA approaches. Seoul and Tokyo have been sharing military intel under the guidelines of GSOMIA since 2016. But the South Korean government had announced on August 22nd not to renew the military information-sharing pact in response to Japan’s placement of export curbs, which triggered the prolonging bilateral spat. If the two countries still want to renew GSOMIA, they need to come to the table until it expires at midnight on November 23rd.
South Korea and Japan are soon to witness their bilateral security alliance crumble ahead of GSOMIA termination. Still, they haven’t resolved their differences in forced labor ruling, which sparked the whole conflict in the first place. It’s been more than a year since Seoul’s top court has ruled in favor of Korean victims of Japan’s wartime forced labor, but the Japanese firms are still refusing to compensate them. Amid the escalating conflict, leaders of the two nations have met for the first time in 13 months on November 4th. Let’s hope the two could come up with ways to mend the ties and recover the frayed bilateral relations.

