South Korea and Japan have agreed to bolster cooperation in resources and energy.

The Ministry of Knowledge Economy said vice minister for energy and trade Park Young-jun proposed the joint development of mines for rare earth elements in third countries in a meeting Thursday with Tetsuhiro Hosono, Director-General of Japan's Agency for Natural Resources and Energy.

Park also proposed working-level talks on developing technologies to recycle rare earth elements.
Hosono responded by mentioning the difficulty Japanese companies have due to China’s restriction of rare earth element exports and expressed his hopes for an effective bilateral working-level discussion.

Rare earth elements are used in high-tech products such as semiconductors and display panels, both of which are accounting for an increasingly large portion of the exports of South Korea and Japan. Such elements are nearly nonexistent in both countries.