President Park Geun-hye will meet with Tokyo Gov. Yoichi Masuzoe on Friday, a South Korean government official said Thursday in a move appearing to reflect South Korea's policy of building local ties despite state-to-state tensions.
The meeting will be Park's first with a Japanese politician since a trilateral summit with Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and U.S. President Barack Obama in March in the Netherlands. Abe and Park have yet to hold a bilateral summit.
"Although Korea-Japan relations remain strained, (we) hope good exchange and cooperation between local authorities of the two countries will continue so as to contribute to the promotion of friendship between the two peoples," Park's spokesman Min Kyung-wook told reporters, according to Yonhap News Agency.