Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba Arrived in S. Korea on His Last Official Trip Overseas

The Yomiuri Shimbun

16:49 JST, September 30, 2025

Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba on Tuesday arrived in Busan, South Korea, where he will hold a summit meeting with South Korean President Lee Jae Myung.

At the summit meeting, the two leaders are likely to agree that future Japanese and South Korean leaders should continue to visit each other’s nation to encourage the stable development of bilateral ties.

It is Ishiba’s first official visit to South Korea since becoming prime minister and his last official overseas trip in the role, having announced that he will step down.

“Under the current strategic circumstances, the Japan-South Korea relationship and Japan-South Korea-U.S. relationship are increasingly important,” Ishiba told reporters in the Prime Minister’s Office in the morning before he departed. “It is important to continue communication between the two countries.”

This is the second time that a Japanese prime minister has visited a provincial city in South Korea as part of the two countries’ bilateral diplomacy. The previous visit was made in 2004 by then Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, who went to Jeju Island.

The aim of Ishiba’s visit is to urge South Korea to cooperate with Japan in tackling issues common to both countries, including population decline in provincial regions.