President Yoon Suk Yeol held a summit with Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida on Sunday to discuss ways to normalize bilateral ties.

The two leaders held the bilateral discussions for 45 minutes at a hotel in Phnom Penh, Cambodia on the sidelines of regional gatherings.

Yoon and Kishida sat down for talks for the first time since they had a short meeting in September on the margins of the United Nations General Assembly in New York.

The two leaders condemned the North's continued ballistic missile launches as a serious and grave provocation that poses a threat to the peace and security of the Korean Peninsula, Northeast Asia and the world.

The leaders then agreed to work together to strengthen trilateral security cooperation with the United States and for a UN Security Council response to the North's nuclear and missile programs.

Yoon's presidential office said in a press release that the two leaders noted active communication between diplomatic authorities regarding a pending bilateral issues and agreed to continue consultation for a swift resolution of the issue.

One of the issues is presumed to be how to compensate the South Korean victims of Japan's wartime forced labor, the biggest issue between the two nations.