The Japan Sumo Association is to make a groundbreaking tour to South Korea in June next year, sumo officials said Tuesday.
A two-day exhibition is penciled in for Seoul. Sumo officials met at a JSA executive board of directors meeting to agree on details of the tour and are set to make an announcement after signing a contract.
The overseas visit will be sumo's 11th and first since the tour to Canada in 1998. It will also be the first tour in Asia since a visit to China in 1973.
The first overseas tour was in the former Soviet Union in 1965.
Sumo is broadcast on television via satellite in South Korea. Kasugao, a 25-year-old from Seoul in the juryo division, is the first South Korean to fight in sumo's top classes.