Japan to Brief South Korea on Export Restrictions, Nikkei Says

(Bloomberg) -- Japan’s Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry plans to set up working-level briefings for their South Korean counterparts to explain export restrictions on some semiconductor and display materials that went into effect on July 4, according to the Nikkei.

The goal of the talks is to show that the measures do not amount to an embargo and to preempt any legal challenge in the World Trade Organization, the newspaper reported, without saying where it obtained the information. Japan has no plan to remove the restrictions, it said.

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s government slapped export restrictions on three highly specialized products needed to make semiconductors and computer displays, and might also remove South Korea from a list of trusted buyers. Starting Thursday, Japanese suppliers of the materials had to file for new export licenses.

The move came after South Korean courts ruled that Japanese companies must compensate Koreans conscripted to work in factories and mines during the 1910-45 colonization of the peninsula.

Separately, Samsung Electronics Co. Vice Chairman Jay Y. Lee may visit Japan as early as Sunday to discuss the measures with local businessmen, Yonhap reported, citing unidentified people in the financial industry. Lee recently has held multiple meetings with Samsung’s management responsible for the company’s chip business and has reviewed plans to visit Japan, according to the report. Samsung declined to confirm Lee’s schedule, Yonhap said.

One of the materials targeted is fluorinated polyimide, a synthetic resin that’s used as a substrate in flexible organic light-emitting-diode screens. The other two are resist polymers and hydrogen fluoride, which are used to imprint and etch chip circuits on silicon wafers.

To contact the reporters on this story: Pavel Alpeyev in Tokyo at palpeyev@bloomberg.net;Hooyeon Kim in Seoul at hkim592@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Shamim Adam at sadam2@bloomberg.net, Cormac Mullen, Stanley James

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