SEOUL (Kyodo) Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama will visit South Korea for talks with President Lee Myung Bak on Oct. 9, a South Korean government official said Sunday.
Hatoyama will meet Lee on the eve of a trilateral summit in Beijing among China, Japan and South Korea.
By selecting South Korea as his first country to visit in Asia after taking office Sept. 16, Hatoyama wants to demonstrate his emphasis on Tokyo-Seoul relations.
Hatoyama and Lee are expected to discuss bilateral ties and the North Korean nuclear issue, according to Japanese and South Korean government sources.
They may also discuss a visit by Emperor Akihito to South Korea and granting voting rights in Japanese local elections to foreign permanent residents, including South Koreans.
Lee expressed hope earlier this month that the Emperor will visit South Korea next year to "put an end to the sense of distance" between the two countries as 2010 marks a century since the beginning of Japan's 35-year-long colonial rule of the Korean Peninsula.
Hatoyama and Lee are also expected to talk about responses to the global financial crisis following last week's Group of 20 financial summit in Pittsburgh and other global issues, including cuts in greenhouse gas emissions and counterterrorism measures, the sources said.
Hatoyama and Lee met in New York last week on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly
They also held talks in Seoul in early June during Hatoyama's first overseas trip as leader of the Democratic Party of Japan.
