Elder statesmen and business leaders from Japan on Monday urged South Korean President Park Geun-hye to hold a summit with her Japanese counterpart, Shinzo Abe, to help improve the bilateral relationship beset by historical and territorial feuds.

During their meeting with Park at Cheong Wa Dae, the six-member Japanese delegation of the South Korea-Japan “Wise Man Group” stressed joint efforts to address historical animosities on the occasion of the 50th anniversary this year of the normalization of their diplomatic ties.

“Park did not directly mention the summit. But we felt she made comments to the effect that Seoul would try to hold a summit at an early date, as she understands the wishes of the Wise Man Group,” former chief cabinet secretary Takeo Kawamura, a member of the Japanese delegation, told the press conference after the meeting with Park.

Since Park was inaugurated in February 2013 she has refused to hold a bilateral summit with Abe, saying that the summit would not yield any fruitful result while the anti-Japanese sentiment continued to worsen.

Kawamura also expressed hopes that Abe would take advantage of his much-anticipated statement in August ― which would mark the 70th anniversary of the end of World War II ― to improve the strained ties with Seoul.

He added that during the talks with Park, she said she wanted to try to help the victims of Japan’s wartime sexual slavery “regain their honor.”

Tokyo has refused to accept the legal responsibility of the atrocities, arguing a lack of clear evidence that Japan as a state forcibly mobilized Korean women for sexual slavery at frontline brothels.

Former South Korean Foreign Minister Yu Myung-hwan, a member of the South Korean side of the group, said that during the talks with Park, the group urged the leaders of the two countries to make a “big decision” to move the bilateral relationship forward.

During the group’s luncheon meeting with Korean Foreign Minister Yun Byung-se, the top diplomat expressed Seoul’s concerns over Japan’s bid to list 23 major wartime industrial facilities as World Heritage sites.

Seoul has demanded that seven of the 23 facilities, those where Koreans were forced to labor during the colonial era, should be removed from the bidding process, or that the historical facts about forced labor should be clearly explained when the seven facilities are presented.

Earlier in the day, former Japanese Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori of the Japanese delegation stressed the importance of bilateral cooperation to cope with the changing security landscape in the region ― beset by Pyongyang’s pursuit of nuclear arms and Beijing’s increasing assertiveness.

“It is very important for South Korea and Japan ― two countries that are small yet very powerful ― to cooperate and respond to the world’s trends amid a shift in international security conditions,” he said during the session in a Seoul hotel.

Saying that there have already been many exchanges among the new generations of the two countries, he pointed out that politicians’ “stubbornness” has hindered the joint efforts to improve bilateral relations.

Launched to explore ways to improve the bilateral ties, the Wise Man Group held its first session in March in Tokyo.

By Song Sang-ho (sshluck@heraldcorp.com)