South Korea and Japan will resume talks between their finance ministers next month to discuss economic and fiscal issues, despite strained diplomatic ties, the Seoul government said Wednesday.
The meeting, set for May 23 in Tokyo, will be the first of its kind since November 2012, when both nations suspended such talks due to frayed relations, the finance ministry said.
It comes after South Korean Finance Minister Choi Kyung-hwan and his Japanese counterpart Taro Aso agreed to separate economics from politics and resume the annual talks during a meeting in Washington in October last year on the sidelines of the International Monetary Fund-World Bank meeting, it said.
The shrine is viewed in South Korea as a symbol of Japan's militarism and the country's unwillingness to acknowledge it past mistakes. Japan has persistently claimed that South Korea is illegally occupying Dokdo. However, Seoul maintains that territorial claims made by Tokyo are groundless and another sign that the neighboring country has not repented for its past aggression.
The finance ministry, however, said that any significant agreement is unlikely to be reached at the upcoming talks since there has been little improvement in diplomatic relations in the past few months.
In addition, bilateral trade fell 13.9 percent on-year to $18.44 billion in the first quarter of this year.
"There are no specific agendas to put on the table, with the finance ministers likely to agree in principle to expanding economic and financial cooperation," a ministry official said.
Before the planned bilateral meeting, Choi and Aso will meet with China's finance minister in Azerbaijan at the ASEAN-plus-three meeting on Sunday, where they will likely discuss strengthening economic cooperation and the need to be prepared for sudden emergency situations, he added. (Yonhap)
