Japanese lawmaker Hiroyuki Konishi says Japan is to blame for violating trade management rules, not S. Korea

An independent Japanese lawmaker said this week that, in fact, Japanese exporters are to blame for its lax export controls.
In other words, the Japanese government is making things difficult for Korean companies... for problems that Japanese firms actually caused.
Yoon Jung-min has details.
A Japanese lawmaker in the House of Councillors, Hiroyuki Konishi, said this week in posts online and interviews... that responsibility for the export curbs on South Korea lies with Japanese firms, not Korean ones.
Konishi said that's what he heard twicdze from the Japanese trade ministry, but that contradicts what the ministry said earlier about the trade curbs.
In July, Tokyo restricted the export to South Korea of three high-tech materials used for making semiconductors, insisting Seoul has failed to properly manage its own controls on shipping strategic goods to North Korea.
Konishi, however, said he heard from an official at the trade ministry that, in fact, it was certain Japanese exporters that had broken the rules on trade management,... and that South Korean companies are not responsible for those infringements according to international trade rules.
He went on to say that the Japanese government must fix the violations by those firms and pull back its export controls,... criticizing the Abe administration for harming Japan's own industries and causing conflict.
Japan has also removed South Korea from a broader whitelist of trusted trading partners.
But when it comes to that, Konishi insisted Seoul is to blame for its lax controls on exports to other countries.
The Japanese government keeps blaming Seoul, so the lawmaker's remarks highlight the sizeable opposition to what the Abe administration is doing.
Yoon Jung-min, Arirang News.