Japan and South Korea agreed Monday to cooperate closely on developing bilateral relations currently strained by Japan's perception of wartime history and a dispute over a pair of islets controlled by Seoul but claimed by Tokyo in the Sea of Japan, which South Korea calls the East Sea.
"I believe this meeting provided the start for building multilayered, future-oriented Japan-South Korea relations," Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida told reporters after his first face-to-face talks with his South Korean counterpart, Yun Byung-se, on the sidelines of a regional security forum in Brunei.
It was also the first time in nine months that the foreign ministers of the two countries have held talks.