S. Korea wants Japan to taste how it feels like being excluded from a "whitelist"

Eye for an eye, Seoul removes Japan from its ‘whitelist’

Alfonsus Adi Putra
Politics & Economic
Economic
Sep 01, 2019
2659
“Time for them to taste their own medicine” might have been what South Korean (S. Korea) officials had in mind when Japan imposed trade restrictions on high-tech materials and chemical components as they were also about to do the same.

Starting September, S. Korea began to impose the same trade treatment toward its neighbor: omitting their name from its “whitelist”. S. Korea’s whitelist consists of 29 trade partners, and starting in September, Japan would be excluded from it to a “new category”.

S. Korean Minister of Trade, Industry, & Energy, Sung Yun-mo, confirmed the news on Monday (12/8). The ban covers more than a thousand export products to Japan. The decision to omit Japan from the whitelist came 20 days after consideration from Seoul officials and the Japanese government’s firm decision to still do so.

With the decision, new regulations are put upon Japan’s shoulders. If once they were only required to submit three documents for the export process, now Japanese companies should submit five, and each will take about 15 days to complete, 10 days longer than usual.

Japanese Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs, Masahisa Sato, accused S. Korea of retaliating against Japan’s move. Sato pointed out that if it was true, then S. Korea would be proven guilty against the regulations set by the World Trade Organization (WTO).

The trade row between S. Korea and Japan started when the Prime Minister of Japan was disappointed by the decision of the S. Korean Supreme Court that demanded Japan to compensate for the forced labor during World War II.

Since the beginning of July, Japan restricted the main components for the development of smartphones and computers in S. Korea such as hydrogen fluoride, photoresist, and fluorinated polyimide. S. Korean tech giants complained that this export curb was trying to “kill” them.

S. Korean Minister of Finance, Hong Nam-Ki, threatened that S. Korea would speed up the filing of its complaints to WTO for the export curbs by the Japanese. S. Korea stated that they were opened for talks, but the Japanese are not having any of it.

Source: https://www.businessinsider.sg/japan-south-korea-trade-war-whitelist-preferential-partners-wwii-tensions-2019-8/?r=US&IR=T

Politics , Economy , Trade , Asia , Japan , S.Korea , Whitelist , WWII , Shinzo-Abe , WTO , Export-Import