South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol pitched the need to improve relations with Korea’s former colonial rulers on Monday, the holiday when the country celebrates its liberation from Japanese rule in 1945. But an imminent court ruling on World War II-era forced labor means his efforts may all be for naught.

In a speech to mark South Korea’s Liberation Day, Yoon stressed the future-oriented vision he has for relations with a country with which it shares a poisonous history but overlapping security concerns.

Yoon contrasted “today” with “the past,” asserting that while Koreans had to “unshackle” themselves from Imperial Japan, Tokyo