Top diplomats of South Korea and Japan will sit down next week to discuss recent conflicts between the two countries.
A Seoul official said Foreign Minister Kang Kyung-wha is scheduled to hold a bilateral meeting with her Japanese counterpart Taro Kono on Wednesday on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
It will be their first meeting since October when South Korea's Supreme Court ordered a Japanese company to pay compensation to South Korean victims of wartime forced labor.
The two ministers are expected to talk about wartime forced labor-related court rulings and a military radar dispute.
Kang will likely explain Seoul’s stance that it cannot intervene in the judicial decisions in principle and that it is working to come up with a response.
Japan’s Kyodo News reported that Kono will inform Kang of Tokyo’s intention to take a decisive action if South Korean courts’ decisions lead to losses for Nippon Steel & Sumitomo Corporation.
There is speculation the Japanese minister will also ask whether Seoul will accept Tokyo’s formal request for talks over a South Korean court’s decision to seize the Japanese firm’s Korea-based assets as requested by four South Korean plaintiffs in a forced labor case.
Last October, South Korea's Supreme Court ordered the Japanese firm to compensate the four victims 100 million won each, but the Japanese firm has refused to follow the order.