President Yoon Suk Yeol (far left) on May 11 speaks to a visiting Japanese delegation at the reception room of the presidential office in Seoul's Yongsan-gu District. (Yonhap News)

By Kim Hayeon and Lee Jihae

President Yoon Suk Yeol on May 11 announced his intent to resume flights between Gimpo International Airport in Seoul and Haneda Airport in Tokyo that have been suspended due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

At a meeting with a group of visiting Japanese lawmakers at the presidential office in Seoul's Yongsan-gu District, the chief executive said that to restore such flights this month, the government will set up quarantine facilities at Gimpo and allow everyone heading to Japan to leave Korea after getting a PCR test.

If Japan exempts passengers who departed from Gimpo from the PCR test, he added, human exchanges between both countries will grow brisker through the resumption of Gimpo-Haneda flights.

Flights between both airports since March 2020 have remained suspended due to the pandemic. Japan has also expressed its desire to resume such flights.

President Yoon called Korea and Japan "each other's closest neighbors and main cooperative partners" who share the values of free democracy and market economy, adding that quick restoration and improvement of stalled bilateral relations are in the interest of both countries.

He said he looked forward to opening a new horizon in friendly and cooperative ties between Seoul and Tokyo through "progressive succession" of the 1998 summit between President Kim Dae-jung and Japanese Prime Minister Keizo Obuchi, an event that he said presented "future-oriented cooperation" in bilateral relations.

Fukushiro Nukaga, the head of the Japan-Korea Parliamentarians Union, said he met Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida in the morning before leaving for Korea. Nukaga quoted the prime minister as saying improvement of ties based on the cooperative relationship is the most important task for both countries since their normalization of bilateral relations in 1965.

Second, Nukaga said Japan wanted to bolster the strategic cooperative partnership between the two sides amid the global situation and fulfill its responsibilities with Korea. He said pushing for human exchanges and resuming active exchanges is in line with what President Yoon said.

The Japanese delegation attending the meeting included Nukaga, Takeo Kawamura, head of the Japan-Korea Friendship Association Federation, and acting union chairman Seishiro Eto. The Korean delegation included the nominee for foreign minister Park Jin and National Security Office chief Kim Sung-han.

hayeounk8@korea.kr