South Korean Foreign Minister Chung Eui-yong said Wednesday the head of the ministry's Asian and Pacific affairs bureau left for Japan to hold working-level talks with his counterpart in a bid to improve chilly bilateral ties.
The talks will be the first face-to-face meeting between two of the countries' senior diplomats since last October and also the first since U.S. President Joe Biden took office in January.
The meeting has been arranged as Seoul and Tokyo remain at odds over issues related to Japan's colonial rule of the Korean Peninsula, including former South Korean "comfort women."