S. Korea, Japan to hold vice-foreign ministers' meeting

SEOUL - South Korea and Japan on Monday will hold vice-foreign ministers' meeting in Seoul later in the day to discuss bilateral and regional issues, South Korea's foreign ministry said.

Japanese Vice-Foreign Minister Akitaka Saiki arrived in Seoul for a one-day visit to hold a meeting with his South Korean counterpart Cho Tae-yong.

The meeting will be held in the afternoon at the request of Japan. Next year marks the 50th anniversary of the normalization of Seoul-Tokyo relations and the 70th anniversary of the Korean Peninsula's liberation from Japan's colonial rule from 1910 to 1945.

The senior Japanese diplomat is expected to offer to hold a summit between Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and his South Korean counterpart Park Geun-hye, who has rejected the summit since her inauguration last year due to Abe's wrong perception of history.

Park proposed in November to hold a trilateral summit with leaders of China and Japan, after having a trilateral meeting among foreign ministers. The two diplomats are expected to discuss the issue later in the day.

The Japanese diplomat is unlikely to seek advancement in the ongoing talks about Japan's sexual enslavement of Korean women during World War II. The two countries have held director general- level talks about the so-called "comfort women", but the talks have been deadlocked.