TOKYO, Nov. 25 (Xinhua) -- Japan on Monday said it was untrue that the government apologized to South Korea after it lodged a protest with Tokyo over its alleged distortion of facts pertaining to Seoul's decision to maintain a bilateral intelligence-sharing pact.
Japan's top government spokesperson, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga, in response to remarks purportedly made over the weekend by South Korea, stating that it had lodged a protest over Japan's distortion of facts and had received an apology, shrugged off the latest wrangle.
"It's unproductive to comment on what the South Korean side says each time. At any rate, it's not true that the government apologized," Suga told a press briefing on the matter.
The latest disputation between both sides follows Japan's trade ministry saying the two countries will hold a policy dialogue because Seoul had committed to improving its monitoring of trade.
On Sunday, Seoul refuted this, stating that Tokyo had misrepresented the facts and South Korea's stance on Japan's stricter export controls.
A South Korean official had said that Tokyo's comments on the issue were in contradiction of the facts and, thus, following a protest being lodged through diplomatic channels, Tokyo had apologized.
"It was not only very different from what the two sides agreed to, but if this was what had been discussed, there's no way there would have been an agreement," Chung Eui Yong, director of the Blue House National Security Office, said at a press conference on Sunday, as quoted by Japan's Kyodo News.
But Suga maintained on Monday that Japan's tougher export controls and recent trade-related dialogue between Tokyo and Seoul were unconnected to to South Korea's temporary extension of the General Security of Military Information Agreement (GSOMIA).
