(MENAFN- QNA) South Korean Deputy foreign ministers from South Korea and Japan held talks in Seoul on Friday to discuss pending bilateral and regional issues, YONHAP news agency reported.
The meeting between South Korean Deputy Foreign Minister for Political Affairs Lee Kyung-soo and his Japanese counterpart Shinsuke Sugiyama came ahead of an expected meeting between Seoul and Tokyo on the issue of Japan's wartime sexual enslavement of Korean women.
Sugiyama flew into Seoul on Thursday to attend a new round of high-level talks among South Korea, China and Japan on boosting three-way cooperation.
In April, Seoul and Tokyo agreed to hold a monthly series of director-level meetings on the issue of sex slaves, but they skipped the meeting in June due to Japan's review of its 1993 apology over the issue before resuming it in July. The two sides also forwent the talks last month.
Seoul has strongly called on Tokyo to unveil substantive measures to resolve the issue ahead of the fourth round of the talks as it believes just holding the talks without substance does not help solve the matter, a major source of diplomatic tension between the two historical rivals.
Lee's meeting with Sugiyama came one day after they and their Chinese counterpart, Liu Zhenmin, held talks on trilateral cooperation for the first time in about 10 months.
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