The leaders of South Korea and Japan met for the first time and four more times afterwards during and on the sidelines of this week's North Atlantic Treaty Organization(NATO) summit in Madrid, Spain.

Although President Yoon Suk Yeol and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida did not hold bilateral talks, they expressed a shared view on the need to improve the frayed two-way ties, and the importance of the trilateral security cooperation with the U.S.

There, however, seemed to be a subtle difference in their positions.

While Yoon's office said Kishida proposed joining efforts to develop sound relations during the leaders' first encounter, Tokyo said Kishida urged Seoul to work towards improving their ties.

The bilateral relations have been frayed since the South Korean top court's 2018 rulings that ordered Japanese firms to compensate Korean victims of Japan's wartime forced labor and Tokyo's retaliatory export curbs against Seoul the following year.