Tokyo, Apr 15 (Agency) South Korea and Japan will hold a meeting of senior diplomats and defense officials next week for the first time in five years to discuss their bilateral security cooperation and regional issues, media reported on Friday, citing the South Korean Foreign Ministry. At the meeting, Seoul will be represented by Seo Min-jung, director-general for Asia and Pacific affairs at the foreign ministry, and Woo Kyung-seok, deputy director-general for international policy at the defense ministry, according to the Yonhap news agency. The South Korean officials will meet with Takehiro Funakoshi, director-general of Asian and Oceanian affairs at the Japanese Foreign Ministry, and Atsushi Ando, deputy director-general of the Defense Policy Bureau. The senior officials of the two countries are expected to discuss various security issues, including the situation in northeast Asia and on the Korean Peninsula, and their bilateral defense and security partnership, the South Korean news agency reported.
It will be the first meeting in this format since 2018, with 11 similar joint consultations held by Seoul and Tokyo since 1998. The intensification of contacts between the two countries comes following a landmark meeting between South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida in Tokyo during which they agreed to normalize relations to better respond to North Korea’s military activity in the region and reopen various dialogue channels suspended over their historical dispute related to Japan’s colonial rule on the Korean Peninsula from 1910-45.