South Korea, Japan to hold first bilateral meeting in 9 years

By Al Mayadeen English
Source: Agencies
4 Oct 2023 14:51
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The meeting in Seoul will entail South Korean First Vice Foreign Minister Chang Ho-jin, convening with his Japanese counterpart, Masataka Okano, to discuss regional and international matters.

South Korean Foreign Minister Park Jin and Japanese counterpart Yoshimasa Hayashi in July 2022 in Tokyo. (AP)

South Korean news agency Yonhap reported on Wednesday that South Korea is due to discuss bilateral relations with Japan for the first time in nine years, according to the South Korean Foreign Ministry.

The meeting in Seoul will entail South Korean First Vice Foreign Minister Chang Ho-jin, convening with his Japanese counterpart, Masataka Okano, to discuss regional and international matters.

The last time a meeting of this sort took place was back in October 2014, shortly before the time when South Korean-Japanese bilateral ties cooled. However, bilateral relations warmed up last March when South Korea announced its intention to compensate victims of Japan’s wartime forced labor without resorting to Japanese companies, as per Yonhap.

Just last week, Chinese and Japanese senior officials were hosted in South Korea, holding a trilateral meeting, aimed at reassuring Beijing about the increased cooperation between Japan, South Korea, and the US, Reuters reported.

The meeting was intended to pave the way for the resumption of three-way summits among the leaders of South Korea, Japan, and China, which had been put on hold since 2019, due to a complex web of legal, diplomatic, and trade disputes.

The meeting was attended by South Korean Deputy Foreign Minister Chung Byung-won, Japanese Senior Deputy Foreign Minister Takehiro Funakoshi, and China's Assistant Minister of Foreign Affairs Nong Rong.

Moreover, South Korea and Japan have been recently conducting drills with the US to allegedly preempt a possible war with China.