Japan and South Korea will resume negotiating a new fisheries pact April 29-30 in Tokyo, Foreign Ministry officials said Tuesday.
The negotiations have been suspended since late January when Tokyo said it would unilaterally terminate the 1965 fisheries pact.
Foreign Minister Keizo Obuchi and his counterpart, Park Chung Soo, had agreed to resume the talks in March when Obuchi visited Seoul. The two countries have held 10 rounds of negotiations since 1996, aimed at replacing the old pact.
A new pact became necessary after both countries ratified the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea, which allows them to set 200-nautical mile exclusive economic zones around their shores.
The sticking point is a dispute over islets in the Sea of Japan, known as Takeshima in Japan and Tok-do in South Korea. The two countries sought to establish provisional fishing waters around the disputed areas, but they could not agree on the size of the provisional waters.
Japan decided to terminate the fisheries pact largely due to pressure from fishing industry organizations and political circles.