Follow-up talks with France on the transfer of ancient Korean books will begin this week.

The South Korean embassy in France says working-level talks will start this week on how to transfer 296 royal Korean books to Seoul.

An embassy official says the talks were to begin last week but discussions between the two countries' related ministries are taking longer than expected.

The official also said protest against the books' return by the librarians of the National Library of France was expected, yet the official also added the protest won't be a major problem, for the two nation's leaders has successfully reviewed legal terms on the book's return.