TOKYO (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 31st August, 2019) Over half of South Korea's population supports the policy course of President Moon Jae-in toward Japan after the latter introduced export restrictions in what was thought to be response to a row over wartime reparations, with his overall approval rating, however, struggling to rise over 50 percent, Gallup Korea said on Friday.
About 55 percent of respondents expressed support for the government's course in relations with Japan over the trade tensions, while 53 percent said that they approved of the government's decision to withdraw from the bilateral South-Korean-Japanese military pact on intelligence sharing, according to Gallup Korea's fresh poll.
At the same time, the overall approval rating of Moon remains relatively low for over several weeks, currently standing at 44 percent, the findings revealed.
The poll was conducted among a little more than 1,000 adults from Tuesday to Thursday with the standard deviation not exceeding 3.1 percent.
Last week, South Korea announced its decision to withdraw from the General Security of Military Information Agreement (GSOMIA), an intelligence-sharing pact that Seoul and Tokyo signed in 2016 amid a series of nuclear and missile tests by North Korea.
On July 1, Japan announced imposing restrictions on exports of certain chemical materials to South Korea that are vital to South Korean manufacturers of semiconductors and displays. It also removed Seoul from its white list of preferred trading partners.
These decisions are widely seen as a tit-for-tat to the 2018 decision of the Supreme Court of South Korea suggesting that Japanese companies should pay reparations to former Korean workers who were forced into labor during World War II by Japan, a colonial power at the time.
Japan's official position regarding the reparations is that the bilateral 1965 Treaty on Basic Relations had fully resolved the matter, meaning that, from Tokyo's point of view, the South Korean court rulings go against previous bilateral agreements.
