The discussions will be held in the capital city of Seoul, with the delegations led by the South Korean Deputy Foreign Minister for Economic Affairs Kang Jae-kwon and Japan's senior deputy foreign minister, Keiichi Ono, the news agency reported on Wednesday. The two sides are expected to discuss bilateral economic cooperation, including at the regional and multilateral levels.
Additionally, Kim Joo-hyun, chairman of Seoul's Financial Services Commission, and Teruhisa Kurita, commissioner of Tokyo's Financial Services Agency, agreed on Wednesday to expand bilateral cooperation in the areas of digitalization of financial services and financial innovation. The meeting was the first regular encounter between the top regulators in seven years.
The economic dialogue between the two countries was launched back in 1999 and ran until January 2016. The fallout came when a statue of a girl — a symbol of Korean victims of Japan's sexual slavery during World War II — was erected in front of the Japanese consulate in the southeastern South Korean city of Busan, prompting the Japanese government to postpone the latest meeting.
In July, Japan and South Korea reached an agreement to continue the dialogue and revive cooperation, after the latter decided to compensate South Korean victims of Japan's occupation from its own resources.