SEOUL: The Republic of Korea (ROK)'s President Roh Moo-hyun on Monday returned to Seoul from his four-day state visit in Tokyo with mixed results.

Roh's Japan trip, after his US visit in mid-May, bore fruit in terms of bilateral economic and cultural ties but achieved little in the political field.

In the joint statement released after Roh's summit meeting with Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, the two leaders vowed to promote and deepen bilateral co-operation, building on the momentum of last year's World Soccer Cup finals, which the two countries jointly hosted.

But Seoul-Tokyo relations cooled after some Japanese politicians downplayed Japan's aggressive history and the impact of its colonial rule over the Korean Peninsula.

The two leaders also agreed to start negotiations on a free trade agreement (FTA) as early as possible.

If the FTA between the two neighbours comes to fruition, it will boost trade between the ROK and Japan and will benefit Seoul greatly. Japan is already the ROK's second largest trading partner, while the ROK is Japan's third biggest. Their bilateral trade volume was US$45 billion last year.

Moreover, according to the statement, the ROK will loosen its restrictions on popular culture products from Japan to enhance bilateral exchanges.

The people of the two countries can expect to cross each other's borders without visas in the near future. And a plan is under way to celebrate the 40th anniversary of normalization of diplomatic ties in 2005.

However, while the ROK and Japan are now closer economically, they are not much further forward in the political field.

The Japanese House of Councillors, or the upper house of the Japanese Diet, recently endorsed three controversial war contingency bills approved by the lower house last month. The bills empower the Japanese military to take counter measures in the event of foreign attack.

The passage of the bills was widely criticized as a departure from the pacifist constitution Japan enacted after World War II, which prohibits "the threat or use of force as means of settling international disputes," and rejects "the right of belligerency of the state."

Japan also did not acknowledge its aggression towards the ROK in either the meeting between Roh and Japanese Emperor Akihito or the joint statement released by Roh and Koizumi.

Roh expressed his concerns over the passage of the contingency bills in the meeting with Koizumi. He and the Japanese premier also committed to going "forward to develop future-oriented bilateral ties for the 21st century" while acknowledging the past.

But Roh's stance on the history issue is clear. "I am determined not to talk about the past in Japan," he said in a news conference in Tokyo. And on the day of his departure from Seoul, he said, "We should not be bound by the shackles of the past forever."

On the stand-off over the DPRK's arms programme, although the two leaders again said the crisis needed to be solved peacefully, they remain some distance apart on the issue. Their joint statement only says that the DPRK's possession of nuclear weapons cannot be tolerated, and Seoul and Tokyo are willing to attend multilateral talks to help resolve the impasse.

In a news conference after Roh-Koizumi's summit, Roh said both dialogue and pressure could be used against Pyongyang to persuade it to abandon its nuclear programme. "But I want to make the point that the ROK puts more emphasis on dialogue," he said.

Roh's remarks referred to the tougher line taken by Koizumi.

Xinhua