(123rf)

South Korea and Japan plan to hold working-level diplomatic consultations Tuesday over their protracted row over wartime forced labor and other bilateral issues, the foreign ministry said.

Lee Sang-ryeol, the ministry's director general for Asia and Pacific affairs, is scheduled to meet with his Japanese counterpart, Takehiro Funakoshi, at the Seoul foreign ministry in Seoul.

Discussions are expected to focus on the issue of resolving compensation for forced labor of Koreans during World War II. The two previously met in Tokyo on Aug. 26.

The meeting follows a summit between South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida held on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly in New York last month.

It has raised hopes for a breakthrough in efforts to warm Seoul-Tokyo relations frayed due to disputes over wartime forced labor and other issues related to Japan's 1910-45 brutal colonial rule of Korea. (Yonhap)