Local governments of S. Korea, Japan form sister relationship

MUAN, South Korea, Oct. 31 (Yonhap) — The governors of South Korea’s South Jeolla Province and Japan’s Kochi Prefecture signed a pact Monday on a sister relationship to strengthen their exchanges and cooperation, the South Korean provincial government said.

The signing of a sister relationship between South Jeolla Gov. Lee Nak-yon and Kochi Gov. Masanao Ozaki came on the heels of an agreement in January by the two to draw together the two regions to a sister relationship. South Jeolla in South Korea’s southwest area and Kochi on Shikoku Island in western Japan signed a pact of tourism and culture in 2003 and a pact of industrial exchanges in 2009.

It marked the fifth time that South Jeolla has formed a sister relationship with overseas municipalities. The provincial government has inked sister relationships with the U.S. states of Oregon and Missouri, and the Chinese provinces of Zhejiang and Jiangxi.

Monday’s ceremony marking the signing of the South Jeolla-Kochi sister relationship was attended by 40 people, including the two local government heads, Toshihiko Takeishi, speaker of the Kochi Prefecture Assembly, and Japanese Ambassador to South Korea Yasumasa Nagamine.

South Korea’s South Jeolla Gov. Lee Nak-yon (R) talks with Japan’s Kochi Gov. Masanao Ozaki in Muan, the capital city of South Jeolla Province, on Oct. 31, 2016, in this photo released by the South Jeolla provincial government. South Jeolla and Kochi signed a pact the same day on a sister relationship to strengthen their exchanges and cooperation.

The pact calls for the further promotion of tourism, culture and industrial exchanges and strengthening joint efforts for mutual prosperity and development.

Hailing the pact, Gov. Lee said, “It is very natural for the province to select Kochi as its first Japanese counterpart in signing a sister relationship, as the province had Yoon Hak-ja, a great mother from Kochi.” Lee was referring to Yoon, who had the Japanese name Chizuko Tauchi and was touted as the Japanese mother of Korean orphans in the region.

Born in Wakamatsu, Kochi Prefecture, in 1912, Tauchi and her mother moved to the Korean peninsula in 1918 to join her father, a colonial government official, in the provincial port city of Mokpo, before getting married to a Korean missionary who ran an orphanage called Gongsaengwon. Korea was a colony of Japan from 1910 to 1945.

It was known that she had raised 3,000 Korean orphans after her husband went missing during the 1950-53 Korean War.

Kochi Gov. Ozaki was jubilant, saying, “I am very happy we could sign the pact on Oct. 31, the birthday of Yoon Hak-ja.”

Participants in the ceremony planted a plum tree inside the premises of the South Jeolla provincial government’s building in memory of Yoon.