Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said on Friday Tokyo still expects South Korea to keep its promises on the contentious issue of wartime forced labour and to work to rebuild trust.

Abe's comments followed South Korea's announcement on Thursday that it was ending an intelligence-sharing agreement with Japan amid a dispute over compensation for South Koreans pressed into wartime labour during Japan's occupation of Korea.

Japanese Minister of Defence Takeshi Iwaya said on the same day South Korea's decision to end the General Security of Military Information Agreement (GSOMIA) was regrettable and showed it failed to appreciate the growing national security threat posed by the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK).

"DPRK's repeated missile tests threaten national security and cooperating between Japan and South Korea and with the U.S. is crucial," Iwaya told reporters. "We strongly urge them to make a wise decision."

Bitter history

Under the GSOMIA, which had been due for automatic renewal on Saturday, the two countries shared information on the threat posed by DPRK's missile and nuclear programs.

Scrapping the pact means Japan and South Korea may have to revert to sharing intelligence through the U.S. military.

Ties between the East Asian neighbors were already at their lowest ebb in years before Seoul's decision to end the pact.

South Korea had warned it could reconsider the GSOMIA after Japan tightened its curbs on exports of semiconductor materials to South Korea and then removed it from a list of nations given preferential trading status.

Seoul said those moves by Japan were in retaliation for a South Korean Supreme Court order for Japanese companies to compensate some of their wartime forced laborers last October.

Japan condemned that ruling, saying the matter was resolved by a 1965 treaty normalizing ties. It has also cited unspecified security reasons for its export controls.