South Korea and New Zealand will resume their negotiations for a bilateral free trade agreement next week after a near four-year pause, the South Korean government said Wednesday.

The fifth round of FTA negotiations between the two countries will be held in Wellington from Monday through Friday, according to the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy.

The fresh round will mark the first of its kind since May 2010. The countries agreed to resume their negotiations late last year in a bilateral trade ministerial meeting on the sidelines of the World Trade Organization Ministerial Conference in Bali, Indonesia.

"At the upcoming round of talks, the two sides will work to make progress in their negotiations by seeking concessions on all remaining issues in all areas of the FTA, including market accessibility," the ministry said in a statement.

The talks will be led by South Korea's Deputy Director-General for Trade Cooperation Lee Seong-ho and his New Zealand counterpart Martin Harvey.

New Zealand was South Korea's 44th-largest trade partner in 2013 with the countries' bilateral trade volume coming to $2.88 billion, up 2.9 percent from a year earlier. (Yonhap)