Lee Myungbak administration wants two-track policy with Tokyo, dealing with economic and political issues separately

It's a little late in the game (his single five-year term ends in just under six months) but ROK President Lee Myungbak seems to have grown a pair.

A pair of hands, that is. He is making the case for a new "two-handed Japan policy" that shakes with the right and bitch slaps with the left.

From the Wall Street Journal:

The latest flare-up of a territorial dispute between South Korea and Japan shouldn't prevent economic cooperation between the two nations, Seoul's finance minister said in Moscow.

Responding to Tokyo's suggestion that it may reconsider agreements to bring the two economies closer together, Bahk Jae-wan said there should be a firewall between economic and political matters.

"The territorial issue and the issue of the mutual economic cooperation between our two countries should be dealt with as two separate issues," Mr. Bahk said in an interview Wednesday, ahead of a meeting of finance ministers from the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum.

I'm not so sure how the Japanese are going to go for it. But to be fair, for as long as they've sought massive trade with Seoul while simultaneously claiming Tokto and ducking responsibility for the Comfort Women issue and other lingering issues from World War II, Tokyo has pretty much been operating from the same policy.

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