Japan, South Korea Seek to End Mistrust : Asia: Both look over their shoulders at an intransigent North Korea. Hosokawa says Japan will not develop nuclear weapons.

Despite a looming threat to both countries from North Korea’s potential development of nuclear weapons, Japan and South Korea on Thursday focused their principal attention on removing mistrust and bitterness from their own relationship.

The occasion was a visit by President Kim Young Sam, who arrived for a three-day stay before going on to China.

Mindful of continuing Korean mistrust of Japan after a 1910-45 Japanese colonial rule, Prime Minister Morihiro Hosokawa offered Kim an unsolicited assurance that, even if Communist North Korea armed itself with nuclear weapons, Japan, as the only nation to suffer nuclear attacks, would never follow suit.

Emperor Akihito, at a black-tie banquet for Kim and his wife at the Imperial Palace, added an apology for “the numerous immense sufferings . . . which my country inflicted . . . on the people of the Korean Peninsula” during Japanese rule.

“I have expressed my deep sadness over this fact some years ago, and my feelings have not changed,” the emperor added in an unusually long toast.

This was the first time an emperor had apologized without diplomatic negotiations in advance. Hosokawa’s nuclear demurral was his second. He made a similar statement when he visited Washington in February.

North Korea, in an apparent bid to justify its suspected nuclear development, has pointed repeatedly to Japan’s use of plutonium in its nuclear power plants as “proof” that Japan ultimately will develop nuclear weaponry. Plutonium can be used to make a nuclear bomb.

Last Nov. 10, just four days after a meeting in South Korea with Hosokawa, Kim declared in an interview with The Times that he feared that Japan would go nuclear if North Korea did.

Kim responded to the emperor with a mild admonition that Japan must “squarely face the past just as it happened and earnestly learn its lessons.” But once that is done, South Korea and Japan can “enter a new era of strong neighborly ties. . . . We must not let our past shackle our future,” he said.

In a speech he delivered today before Parliament, Kim proposed that “we close this century of strife and friction and open a new era of genuine bilateral friendship and cooperation.”

Hosokawa and Kim agreed to continue close cooperation with the United States to persuade North Korea to abandon nuclear development and allow full international inspections of its nuclear facilities.

But Kim warned that “there is a limit to our patience” with North Korean delaying tactics.

Hosokawa, for his part, reiterated a pledge to act “with responsibility” to carry out any sanctions the U.N. Security Council might impose on North Korea.

Vice Foreign Minister Kunihiko Sato said in a speech that Japan should be prepared even to revise its laws, if necessary, to carry out its part of any sanctions. At issue if sanctions are imposed is how Japan would halt the flow of an estimated $600 million worth of remittances to North Korea made by Korean residents sympathetic to the Stalinist regime.

“The countries who are the recipients of the threat posed by the North Korea nuclear problem are South Korea and Japan. If Japan failed to implement completely U.N. sanctions, it would be branded an irresponsible nation,” Sato said.

A mistake in handling the North Korean nuclear issue, he added, “would invite the isolation of Japan in international society.”

Hosokawa was expected to face opposition from the Socialist Party, his largest coalition partner that maintains friendly ties with North Korea, if attempts are made to halt the flow of money to Pyongyang.