SEOUL - South Korea and Japan have failed to narrow their differences in a stand-off over whether a Korean warship had locked its targeting radar on a Japanese patrol plane last month, Korean news agency Yonhap reported on Tuesday (Jan 15), citing the country's defence ministry.
General-ranked representatives from the two sides met in Singapore on Monday (Jan 14) but could not resolve the dispute, according to the defence ministry. It was the first face-to-face contact between officials from the two nations over the Dec 20 incident, Yonhap said.
Tokyo accuses a South Korean warship of locking fire-control radar on its maritime patrol aircraft, and has released a video clip to back up its claim.
Seoul says the ship was on a mission to rescue a North Korean ship that was drifting in the international waters of the East Sea, and has released its own clip, which it says shows Japan conducting a "threateningly" low-altitude flight towards the warship.
"The two sides were apart (throughout the Singapore meeting)," a ministry official told Yonhap, suggesting that no agreement was reached.
They plan to schedule additional talks, the report said, citing a defence source.
The two countries share a bitter history that includes Japan's 1910-45 colonisation of the Korean peninsula, the forced mobilisation of labour at Japanese companies and the use of comfort women, Japan's euphemism for girls and women, many of them Korean, forced to work in its wartime brothels.
The rows over wartime history have long been a hurdle for relations at a time when there is a need for concerted efforts to dismantle North Korea's nuclear and missile programmes.
The talks on Monday began at the South Korean Embassy in Singapore in the morning, Yonhap said. A second round took place at the Japanese Embassy in the afternoon.
South Korea's delegation was led by Vice-Admiral Boo Suk-jong of the chief director of military support at Seoul's Joint Chiefs of Staff and Lee Won-ik, director general of international policy at the defence ministry.
In the Japanese delegation were Lieutenant-General Atsushi Hikita, the director of operations at Tokyo's Joint Staff Office, and senior defence ministry official Takeshi Ishikaw.
