South Korean Foreign Minister Ban Ki Moon said Friday that Seoul and Tokyo will hold negotiations next week here on demarcating their exclusive economic zones around a pair of disputed islets under the South's control.
Speaking to senior journalists in Seoul, Ban said the two-day working-level talks, the third this year, start Monday.
South Korea will be represented by Park Hee Kwon, director general for the Treaties Bureau of the South Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade, and his Tokyo counterpart will be Ichiro Komatsu, head of the Foreign Ministry's International Legal Affairs Bureau.
The demarcation talks got under way after the two countries averted a near confrontation in April over a planned seabed survey by Japan near the South Korean-controlled islets, called Dokdo in South Korea and claimed by Japan as Takeshima. The islets have a small South Korean garrison.
