Seoul and Tokyo have agreed to improve bilateral interchanges on municipal development after lackluster coordination over the past decade.
At the Tokyo Metropolitan Government office on Tuesday, Seoul Mayor Park Won-soon signed a pact with Tokyo Gov. Yoichi Masuzoe on collaborating on the environment, city safety, tourism, welfare, sports and culture.
Seoul Mayor Park Won-soon (left) poses with Tokyo Gov. Yoichi Masuzoe during an event to forge a pact on activating mutual interchanges at the Tokyo Metropolitan Government office in Sinjuku district on Tuesday. (Yonhap)
Their ties, which were clinched in 1988, remained nominal for about 10 years, during the terms of Mauzoe’s predecessors.
In the sports sector, experiences from the 1988 Seoul Olympic Games will be shared to help Tokyo prepare for the 2020 Summer Olympics. For city safety and development, Seoul has signed a memorandum of understanding on exchanges of civil engineering technologies to prevent hazardous sinkholes in the streets.
In July 2014, President Park Geun-hye met with Tokyo Gov. Yoichi Masuzoe at Cheong Wa Dae amid strained diplomatic ties between the two countries on account of territorial and historical feuds.
During the meeting, Masuzoe delivered a message by Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe that he would make efforts to improve the relations between the two countries.
The governor told Park that Abe had stressed the importance of building future-oriented bilateral ties in a recent meeting.
The Japanese prime minister also requested that Masuzoe inform the South Korean president that he would “make efforts for the improvement of Korea-Japan ties.”
By Kim Yon-se (kys@heraldcorp.com)
