South Korea yesterday slammed Japan for effectively downgrading Seoul’s trade status and accused Prime Minister Shinzo Abe of treating the neighbour as an “adversary”.

The comments are the latest in a bitter tit-for-tat row stemming from a long-running diplomatic dispute over Japan’s use of forced labour during its colonial rule over the peninsula from 1910 to 1945.

They came as Tokyo’s removal of the South from its “white list” of trusted trade partners went into effect—Seoul has already announced it will reciprocate, and last week said it will terminate a military information-sharing pact with Japan, raising concerns in Washington, which has security treaties with both. “Prime Minister Abe commented twice that Korea cannot be trusted and is treating us like an adversary,” said Kim Hyun-chong, a national security official at the Blue House.