SEOUL, Sept. 22 (BNA) South Korean President Yoon Sok-yeol and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida held their first private talks on Wednesday and agreed on the need to improve relations wracked by historical differences.
The meeting was held in New York on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly, in the first such talks between the leaders of the two countries since 2019, Reuters reported.
Yun, who took office in May, was eager to improve relations with Tokyo. Japan also emphasized the importance of strategic cooperation.
“The two leaders agreed on the need to improve relations by resolving outstanding issues on which they agreed to speed up diplomatic talks while continuing their discussions,” Lee Jae-myung, Yoon’s deputy spokesman, said in a statement.
Both sides described the 30-minute meeting as “informal.”
Japanese Foreign Ministry Press Secretary Hikariko Ono said the two leaders “share the need to restore healthy bilateral relations while resolving various issues.” She said they agreed to develop relations “in a future-oriented manner on the basis of the friendly and cooperative relationship that the two countries have established since the normalization of diplomatic relations in 1965.”
MI