Europe News Desk!! South Korea and Japan held a joint meeting of senior diplomats and defense officials here on Monday, indicating a gradual improvement in ties between the two countries. South Korea’s Foreign Ministry said that this is the first such dialogue since March 2018. South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida agreed last month to repair ties strained by historic disputes and step up security cooperation in the face of North Korea’s increasing provocations, Yonhap news agency reported. After this there has been a Director General level policy consultation meeting between the two countries.
The so-called two-plus-two meeting was attended by Seo Min-jung, Director-General for Asia and Pacific Affairs at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Woo Kyung-suk, Deputy Director-General for International Policy at the Ministry of Defense, and their Japanese counterparts, Takahiro Funakoshi, Director-General for Asian and Ocean Affairs and Defense Atsushi Ando, Deputy Director General of the Policy Bureau, attended. During the session, both sides are expected to share their assessments of the security situation in Northeast Asia and the Korean Peninsula and their respective defense and security policies. Leaders of the two countries agreed at a summit in Tokyo last month to reactivate various government dialogue channels, suspended amid ties strained by historical disputes stemming from Japan’s colonization of the Korean Peninsula during 1910-45. they were finished. Following an agreement in 1997 between the foreign ministers of the two countries, the joint consultative meeting began in 1998.
–IANS
World News Desk!!
AKJ/CBT