Leaders expected to use first summit since 2011 to address Japan’s use of Korean forced labour, as well as threats posed by North Korea and China
Yoon Suk Yeol will be treated to his favourite dish – omelette rice – when he becomes the first South Korean president to visit Japan in more than a decade on Thursday, as hopes rise for an end to years of animosity between the north-east Asian neighbours.
Given that the menu for official dinners has been a diplomatic flashpoint between the two countries, efforts by Yoon’s hosts to accommodate his palate are evidence of the recent thaw in relations, as regional tensions rise over North Korean missiles and Chinese military activity.
Yoon and Kishida are expected to use the first summit between Japanese and South Korean leaders since 2011 to address thorny bilateral issues, including Japan’s use of Korean forced labour before and during the second world war.
The countries have also been locked in a dispute over the so-called “comfort women” – tens of thousands of mainly Korean women and girls who were forced to work in Japanese military brothels during Japan’s 1910-45 colonial rule over the Korean peninsula. The countries also have competing claims to the Takeshima-Dokdo islands, which are administered by South Korea.
After years of wrangling over the countries’ bitter wartime legacy, officials in Tokyo are playing up Yoon’s affection for Japan, and apparently rewarding him with a dinner of omurice – fried rice encased in an omelette – at Rengatei, a 128-year-old restaurant in the capital’s upmarket Ginza neighbourhood.
The request for the dish came from Yoon himself, according to the Yomiuri Shimbun. Rengatei, which opened in 1895, was apparently chosen to host Yoon and Japan’s prime minister, Fumio Kishida, after the South Korean newspaper Dong-A Ilbo said Yoon had spoken fondly of a “certain restaurant” during a conversation with a Japanese official before he became president in 2022.
