"The sides agreed to hold the seventh round of talks on Tokyo’s export policies during the third week of December … Before that, in Austria’s Vienna, a working meeting on the level of department heads will be held on 4 December", the Ministry’s spokesperson said during a briefing on the results of a bilateral meeting in Seoul.
Last week, South Korean Foreign Minister Kang Kyung-wha said Seoul and Tokyo had agreed to coordinate their efforts for organizing a meeting between South Korean President Moon Jae-in and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on the sidelines of the trilateral summit with China, that was scheduled for December.
Relations between the two Asian countries have been strained since July when a South Korean court ruled that Japanese companies must pay reparations to former Korean workers who were forced into labor during World War II by the Japanese Empire.
The tensions further escalated after Japan introduced limitations on the exports of chemicals widely used by South Korea’s electronics industry. Additionally, Tokyo removed Seoul from its list of trading partners with preferential rights.
South Korea initially planned to withdraw from an intelligence-sharing agreement with Japan. However, Seoul reversed its decision earlier in November.