WORLD NEWS | Kishida scores first goal in Japan vs. Korea

TOKYO, March 10 (AP) Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida threw the first pitch in Friday’s World Baseball Classic between Japan and South Korea, the bounced ball was caught by Japanese manager Hideki Kuriyama, who designated catcher.

Kishida is qualified to make a better pitch. He was a high school baseball player and remains a huge fan of his hometown professional baseball team, the Hiroshima Carp.

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Kishida wears the number 101 because he is in charge of the 101st Japanese government cabinet in modern history.

His presence was highly symbolic, a sign of improving relations between the two countries, which were often at odds over Japan’s colonization of South Korea from 1910 to 1945.

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Kishida has invited South Korean President Yoon Hek-yeol to visit Japan next week, which could be the start of some “shuttle diplomacy”.

Kishida and Yoon will hold a summit on strengthening ties, the two governments said on Thursday.

On Monday, South Korea announced it would raise local funds to compensate South Koreans who received damages in a lawsuit against two Japanese companies for forced labor during colonial rule.

Kishida took office in October 2021 and enjoyed high approval ratings — minimal but uncontroversial achievements — until last summer, when the powerful former leader of his ruling Liberal Democratic Party, Shinzo Abe, was assassinated in July.

Kishida’s approval ratings have since plummeted as he addressed his party’s decades-long close relationship with the Unification Church of Korea, which was revealed after Abe’s death.

As foreign minister, Kishida struck a deal with South Korea in 2015 to resolve the dispute over “comfort women” who were sexually abused by the Japanese military before and during World War II.

Part of that legacy still hampers relations between the two neighbors.

Kishida was first elected to parliament in 1993. An advocate for nuclear disarmament, he escaped former President Barack Obama during his 2016 visit to Hiroshima, the city that was obliterated together with Nagasaki in US atomic bombings in the closing days of World War II ( Associated Press)

(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from a Syndicated News feed, the content body may not have been modified or edited by LatestLY staff)