Japan and Korea Vow Unity on Economic Slump

SEOUL, South Korea — The global financial crisis prompted the leaders of South Korea and Japan to set aside their countries’ century of disputes on Monday and agree to cooperate to meet immediate economic challenges.

But Korean victims of Japan’s World War II brutalities voiced distress at the summit meeting and joint news conference of President Lee Myung-bak of South Korea and Prime Minister Taro Aso of Japan. They accused Mr. Lee of sacrificing the South’s national pride for short-term economic gains.

“We did not deal directly with the issue of history,” Mr. Aso told the conference. “President Lee agreed to my view that Asia should be the growth center in the world and play a big role in the global economy recovery.”

Mr. Lee said medium-size Japanese companies agreed to invest in electronics and machinery components factories in South Korea. Such investments will help reduce the country’s chronic trade deficit with Japan, which amounts to $30 billion annually, he said.

An exponent of “pragmatic diplomacy,” Mr. Lee has said he will not demand any new apology from Japan for its colonial rule. The conservative leader has lamented that disputes rooted in Japan’s rule of Korea from 1910 to 1945 deprived two neighbors of opportunities to increase economic ties and work more closely together to cope with North Korea’s nuclear threats.

Although Mr. Lee was not the first Korean leader to take such a stance, his approach raised concerns among Koreans after Mr. Aso took power last September.

Mr. Aso had infuriated Koreans with comments they saw as defending Japan’s wartime atrocities and denigrating Korea and other former Japanese colonies. A company run by his family used Korean forced labor at its mines before and during the war.

The two countries are each other’s third largest trading partners. Their two-way trade totaled $82 billion in 2007. But Koreans still harbor deep resentment against the Japanese. Earlier agreements to raise economic ties foundered in recurring disputes bubbling up from the violent past. For instance, Mr. Lee’s overtures toward Japan hit a snag in July when Tokyo urged schools to teach Japan’s territorial claim to an island held by South Korea.

“If Lee and Aso think they can bury the historical problems under the carpet of the economy, they will soon find they are wrong,” said Kang Joo-hye, secretary general at the Korean Council for the Women Drafted for Military Sexual Slavery by Japan. Mr. Kang’s group supports Korean women forced to work in brothels operated for the Japanese Army during World War II.