Seoul, Tokyo FMs to hold meeting in New York

South Korea's foreign minister will meet with his Japanese counterpart in New York this week to discuss pending bilateral issues and the situation on the Korean Peninsula, the foreign ministry said Thursday.

Foreign Minister Yun Byung-se will hold a one-on-one meeting with Japan's top diplomat Fumio Kishida late Thursday (U.S. time) on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly, the ministry said.

The bilateral meeting comes amid Seoul's uneasiness with what it sees as Tokyo's moves to gloss over its wartime history including Japan's sexual enslavement of Korean women during World War II, a major source of soured ties.

Yun last held one-on-one talks with Kishida on the sidelines of the ASEAN Regional Forum, an annual security meeting, in Myanmar in August. The two top diplomats and their Chinese counterpart also met in Seoul for a three-way meeting on cooperation earlier this month.

The planned meeting comes after Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe proposed to hold a summit with South Korean President Park Geun-hye in the fall.

Abe conveyed his written offer to Park through former Japanese Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori, who visited Seoul late last week.

In response, Park called for sincere efforts by Japan to resolve the issue of Korean victims of Japan's wartime sexual enslavement. Park has shunned a bilateral summit with Abe since her inauguration in February 2013, in response to policy moves Seoul deems to be aggressively nationalistic.

Seoul and Tokyo held a fourth round of talks on the issue of Japan's sex slaves Friday where South Korea called on Japan to unveil substantive measures as it believes discussions alone are not sufficient to resolve the issue.

In April, the two countries agreed to hold a series of monthly meetings on the issue, but they skipped the meeting in June due to Japan's review of its 1993 apology over the issue before resuming talks in July. A meeting that was supposed to be held in August was delayed to September.