(Image: Yonhap)
Businesspeople from South Korea and Japan have urged their governments to issue special entry permits for fully vaccinated entrepreneurs in an effort to promote bilateral economic cooperation.
The request was made Wednesday at a meeting in Seoul between Japanese Ambassador Koichi Aiboshi and some 30 businessmen from the two countries.
The event was hosted by the Federation of Korean Industries.
Participants cited bilateral travel restrictions as the biggest hurdle they are facing and called for the resumption of now-suspended special entry procedures.
They also pressed Seoul and Tokyo to sign an air travel bubble, or a quarantine-free travel partnership.
FKI Chairman Huh Chang-soo stressed that the two sides should expand economic cooperation since a diplomatic row has sent bilateral trade sinking nearly 12 percent over the past two years.
The Japanese envoy responded by saying there is great room for the two technologically advanced countries to cooperate in such fields as carbon neutrality, the trade row between China and the United States, and the fourth industrial revolution.
In July 2019, Japan slapped export controls on chemicals vital to the South Korean chip industry in apparent retaliation against a Seoul court's ruling that ordered Japanese firms to compensate victims of their wartime forced labor.
Aiboshi also said Tokyo will transparently share information with Seoul on its planned release of wastewater from its crippled Fukushima nuclear power plant.
Japan announced in April that it will start discharging the tritium-laced water into the sea in 2023, sparking outrage from South Korea and other neighboring countries.
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