The Finance Ministers of Japan and South Korea will reportedly hold a bilateral meeting early next month for the first time in seven years. At this meeting later, the finance prime ministers of Japan and South Korea will mark closer cooperation covering economic policies that have been hampered by diplomatic conflicts.
South Korean Finance Minister Choo Kyung-ho told reporters that during his visit to the United States, he had agreed to meet with Shunichi Suzuki, Japan’s Minister of Finance, according to reports from a media group.
The meeting will be held on the sidelines of the Asian Development Bank (ADB) annual meeting to be held in Incheon, South Korea on May 2-5, but other details have yet to be decided, said Choo.
Choo said that this was important as it would be the first step to reviving regular bilateral meetings.
The regular annual meeting between Japan’s and South Korea’s finance ministers was suspended in 2016 over disagreements over their wartime history.
Last month at a meeting between South Korea’s Yoon Suk Yeol and Japan’s Fumio Kishida, the two neighbors vowed to put aside their difficult history together and work together to tackle regional security challenges.
Financial markets will also likely be watching whether finance ministers will discuss the continuation of the bilateral currency exchange arrangement that had served as a barrier against a potential currency crisis but ended in February 2015.
Source: CNA