Foreign Minister Taro Kono may meet his South Korean counterpart, Kang Kyung-wha, next week on the sidelines of the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, to discuss bilateral ties that have worsened over wartime labor issues, diplomatic sources said Thursday.
A meeting between Kono and Kang would be the first since frictions arose following a South Korean court ruling in late October, which ordered a Japanese firm to pay compensation for wartime forced labor during Japan's colonial rule of the Korean Peninsula between 1910 and 1945.
The alleged lock-on of a fire-control radar system operated by the South Korean Navy onto an Air Self-Defense Force patrol plane has also exacerbated the tensions between Tokyo and Seoul.