Mick Hartley

Poor Moon Jae-in, South Korean president. He's received nothing but brickbats for his – admittedly pathetic – efforts to appease North Korean leader Kim Jong-un. And now this:

South Korea’s president has cancelled a meeting with the Japanese prime minister after Tokyo’s deputy ambassador to Seoul dismissed his efforts to improve ties as “masturbating”.

Moon Jae-in was to have met Yoshihide Suga on Friday, and then to have attended the opening ceremony of the Olympics. His trip has been called off after a South Korean cable news station reported the remarks to a reporter by Hirohisa Soma, deputy head of mission at the Japanese embassy.

“President Moon is masturbating himself,” Soma said, referring to what Tokyo sees as the South Korean government’s irresolute approach to diplomacy with Japan. He added: “Japan does not have the time to care so much about the relationship between the two countries as South Korea thinks.”

Yes, I think that counts as a lewd insult.

Of course the relationship between Japan and South Korea has always been fraught – in particular over the issue of "comfort women", who were forced to prostitute themselves to the Japanese troops during the Japanese occupation of Korea before and during WW2. It's all supposed to have been settled, but somehow it keeps cropping up as a source of resentment, with the feeling on the part of the Koreans – no doubt justified – that the Japanese aren't frankly that bothered, and are just paying lip service. This latest sexual insult just adds to the feeling that the Japanese still look own on the Koreans. "Japan does not have the time to care so much about the relationship between the two countries as South Korea thinks.”

Moon may indeed be a wanker, politically speaking, but it comes badly from the mouth of a Japanese politician.