Korea, Japan resume high-level economic talks after nearly 8 years

South Korea and Japan will hold bilateral economic talks later this week, Seoul's foreign ministry said Wednesday, in the resumption of the dialogue that had been stalled for almost eight years over a historical feud, Report informs via Yonhap.

The talks will take place in Seoul on Thursday, led by Kang Jae-kwon, South Korean deputy foreign minister for economic affairs, and Keiichi Ono, Japan's senior deputy foreign minister, the ministry said in a press release.

The two sides will assess the bilateral economic cooperation and discuss issues of mutual concern, including cooperation in economic security policy and regional and multilateral cooperation, the ministry said.

"We expect the resumption of the economic dialogue to serve as an occasion for the bilateral ties to further develop into a future-oriented cooperative relationship," the ministry said.

The two countries launched the economic dialogue in 1999 as a channel to discuss comprehensive economic cooperation, but it had not been held since the last session in Tokyo in January 2016.

The lull came as the Japanese government unilaterally postponed the meeting in late 2016, when a girl's statue symbolizing Korean victims of Japan's sexual slavery during World War II was erected in front of the Japanese Consulate in South Korea's southeastern city of Busan.

The meeting remained suspended as the bilateral relations between Seoul and Tokyo further deteriorated over a host of thorny issues stemming from Japan's 1910-45 colonial rule of the Korean Peninsula.

South Korea and Japan agreed to resume the dialogue in July this year amid a significant warming of the bilateral ties after South Korea decided in March to compensate Korean victims of Japan's wartime forced labor on its own without Japan's contribution.

Seoul's proposal for the resolution led to the resumption of reciprocal visits by the countries' leaders and the agreement to revive key high-level exchanges, including diplomatic dialogue channels.