Japan and South Korea are making final arrangements for their senior diplomats to hold talks in Tokyo this week on Japan's wartime sexual enslavement of Korean women, sources close to bilateral ties said Monday.
The talks, to held at the director general level, are likely to take place Thursday or Friday and will also take up the issue of lawsuits seeking compensation for Korean forced laborers who were conscripted during the war, the sources said.
Japan will be represented by Junichi Ihara, director general of the Asian and Oceanian Affairs Bureau of the Foreign Ministry, and South Korea by Lee Sang Deok, director general of the South Korean Foreign Ministry's Northeast Asian Affairs Bureau.
The diplomats are also likely to discuss South Korea's import restrictions on Japanese fishery products that were imposed amid concerns over radiation after the triple meltdown at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant in March 2011, the sources said.
Relations between Japan and South Korea remain strained amid disputes over historical issues related to Japan's colonial rule of the Korean Peninsula and a territorial row over tiny islets in the Sea of Japan.