South Korean President Lee Myung-bak and Japan's opposition party leader agreed Monday that ethnic Koreans in Japan should be granted voting rights, Lee's office Cheong Wa Dae said.
In his meeting here with Lee, Natsuo Yamaguchi, head of the New Komeito, also stressed that Tokyo's decision to return a set of ancient Korean
documents to Seoul should be ratified by Japan's Diet unanimously, according to Cheong Wa Dae.
Yamaguchi "reaffirmed the New Komeito's will on the issue of suffrage for Koreans in Japan," Cheong Wa Dae spokeswoman Kim Hee-jung told reporters.
"He promised to continue efforts" so that a related bill can pass the parliament, she added.
About 600,000 ethnic Koreans reside in Japan on a permanent basis, most of them descendants of those mobilized for forced labor during Japan's colonization of the Korean Peninsula from 1910-45.
Struggling with discrimination in a mostly homogeneous society, Koreans in Japan have long sought the right to vote in local elections there.
But Japan's conservatives are lukewarm about granting voting rights to foreign residents.
Yamaguchi also said Japan's Diet should endorse the government's plan to transfer 1,205 volumes of Korea's ancient books, including a collection of
royal protocols from the Joseon Dynasty (1392-1910), known as "Uigwe," all of which were taken away during the colonial era.
South Korea and Japan signed a pact on the return of the books when the South Korean leader visited Japan earlier this month.
"In response, President Lee said that the unanimous passage (of a relevant bill) would be better for the relations between the two countries," the spokeswoman said.