Tokyo Minister Resigns; Korea Talks on Track

The resignation of a Japanese Cabinet minister Monday defused a diplomatic row between South Korea and Japan that had threatened to disrupt the two nations’ ties just days before a Pacific Rim summit.

South Korea had furiously demanded that Takami Eto, head of the Management and Coordination Agency, be fired or resign for commenting last month that Japan did some “good things” during its 1910-1945 colonial rule of Korea.

Eto is the latest of several politicians to provoke Korean anger by seeming to whitewash Japan’s harsh 35-year domination.

Seoul had insisted that unless Eto left his post, it would cancel a summit meeting between South Korean President Kim Young Sam and Japanese Prime Minister Tomiichi Murayama set for Saturday.

Eto, 70, who initially retracted his remarks but refused to resign, yielded to pressure Monday evening. “As a politician, I cannot help but feel a heavy responsibility” for the repercussions of the comments, he told a news conference.

The summit between Kim and Murayama will now take place as planned, as leaders from the 18 members of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum gather in Osaka, Japan, for an annual multilateral summit. Cancellation of the Kim-Murayama summit would have dealt a sharp blow to the image of regional harmony that Japan wants the event to convey.

South Korean Foreign Ministry spokesman Suh Dae Won welcomed Eto’s resignation, calling it “a natural step for relations between Korea and Japan.”

Suh added, however, that Seoul will not consider the matter ended and will raise the issue of Eto’s comments and similar gaffes by other Japanese politicians at the Kim-Murayama summit.

In recent days, several key officials from Murayama on down--especially within the conservative Liberal Democratic Party, the strongest force in the three-party ruling coalition--had insisted they would not yield to South Korean pressure. But some politicians from the smaller ruling-coalition parties called for Eto to resign, and the opposition New Frontier Party introduced a no-confidence motion against Eto in the lower house of Parliament on Monday.

Eto made his remarks about Japanese colonial rule Oct. 11, at a time when Murayama had come under sharp criticism for having said in Parliament that the 1910 treaty by which Japan annexed Korea had been technically valid. Murayama’s remarks provoked a wave of Korean anger, which was defused when the premier issued a clarification saying the two nations had been on an “unequal footing.”