South Korea has reportedly asked Japan recently to lift its trade restrictions along with the resolution of the issue of compensation for victims of Tokyo's wartime forced labor, but Japan rejected it.

Quoting multiple Japanese government officials, Japan's Sankei Shimbun newspaper reported on Sunday that South Korean Foreign Minister Park Jin made the demand during the recent talks with Japanese top diplomat Yoshimasa Hayashi.

The paper said that during the talks in Cambodia on August 4, Minister Park asked Japan to re-include South Korea in Tokyo's so-called "white list" of countries entitled to receive preferential treatment in trade and lift trade curbs on exports of three high-tech materials needed to make memory chips and semiconductors.

Hayashi, however, is said to have rejected the demand, saying that the trade restrictions and wartime forced labor compensation are separate issues.

In July 2019, Japan tightened controls on exports to South Korea of three chemicals used in the production of semiconductor products and removed South Korea from its "white list" of countries with preferential trade status a month later.