South Korean and Japan have agreed to cooperate in tourism promotion with the aim of having seven million citizens travel between the neighboring countries in 2013.

South Korea’s Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism said the two sides agreed to work to boost bilateral tourism exchanges independent of the current political and economic situations surrounding South Korea and Japan. They came to the agreement in a conference on promoting tourism between the two countries, which opened in Hakodate, Japan, on Sunday.

The number of South Korean and Japanese tourists traveling between both countries shrank from five-point-46 million in 2010 to four-point-95 million last year in the wake of the Fukushima nuclear crisis, which was caused by a massive earthquake that jolted eastern Japan. Only one-point-66 South Korean people traveled to Japan last year.

South Korea is expected to see the number of inbound foreign tourists surpass 10 million this year for the first time in its history. Japanese people constitute the largest portion of the foreign tourists at 32-point-eight percent.