Japan PM, South Korea president-elect agree to improve ties

By MARI YAMAGUCHI
Associated Press

TOKYO (AP) — Japan’s Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and South Korea’s president-elect Yoon Suk Yeol talked on the phone Friday, agreeing to cooperate toward improving their countries’ ties, while signaling a thaw in icy relations strained by wartime history disputes. Yoon, a conservative former top prosecutor and foreign policy neophyte, was elected South Korean president this week and will replace outgoing Moon Jae-in, under whose leadership bilateral relations have sunk to their lowest level in years over Japan’s atrocities committed during its 1910-1945 colonization of the Korean Peninsula.