While the U.S. and China agreed to a temporary trade war truce on the sidelines of last weekend's G20 Summit,... another trade spat might be about to erupt.
This time, between South Korea and Japan.
Lee Ji-won has more.
The Japanese government has taken economic retaliation against South Korea for its ruling over compensation for forced labor.

Japan's Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry announced Monday that starting Thursday, it will tighten restrictions on the export of high-tech material used in smartphones and chips to South Korea.

The three restricted items are fluorine polyimide, which is used as a liquid crystal display component in TVs and smartphones,... and resist and etching gas used for manufacturing semiconductors.

Japan accounts for about 90-percent of the global supply of the fluorine-containing polyimide and resists markets, and 70-percent of the etching gas market,... and South Korean tech companies are heavily dependent on Japan for these materials.

According to Kyodo News Agency, the ministry said the move comes as trust between the two sides has broken down.

This is the first time Tokyo has imposed actual sanctions measures on Seoul, after threatening to take such actions on numerous occasions.
This comes as Seoul's Supreme Court last year ordered Japanese companies, Nippon Steel & Sumitomo Metal Corporation and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries to compensate South Korean victims of forced labor during its colonization under Japan.

While Japan has been insisting that it had already paid compensation when the two sides normalized their ties in 1965, Seoul's top court said the bilateral agreement between the governments does not take away individuals' rights to reparations.

After months without action from the Japanese side, Seoul's top court froze the Japanese firms' assets within South Korea but has not yet started selling off those assets.

While the sanctions are expected to take their toll on South Korean tech firms,... Seoul's foreign affairs minister Kang Kyung-wha said at the National Assembly last month,... that Seoul will not just sit and watch if Japan takes retaliatory measures on Seoul against the forced labor ruling.

Though Kang said she made those comments in order to prevent the situation from getting worse,... Japan's latest move is expected to further increase the tension between the two sides.
Lee Ji-won, Arirang News.