President Park to meet former Japanese leader

South Korean President Park Geun-hye plans to meet with a former Japanese prime minister later this week, an official said Thursday, amid a recent thaw in relations between the two neighbors.

Park is set to meet with former Japanese Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori on Friday, presidential spokesman Min Kyung-wook said, a move that’s widely seen as a potential stepping stone for a summit between Park and her Japanese counterpart, Shinzo Abe.

Mori, who is due to arrive in Seoul to attend Friday’s opening ceremony of the Asian Games to be held in South Korea’s western port city of Incheon later that day, is expected to carry Abe’s message to Park.

Park has shunned a summit with Abe due mainly to historical disputes stemming from Japan’s 1910-45 colonial rule of the Korean Peninsula.

Still, the two leaders met in a trilateral summit with U.S. President Barack Obama on the sidelines of a nuclear security summit in the Netherlands in March, the first summit between Seoul and Tokyo in nearly two years.

Seoul and Tokyo have been at loggerheads for decades over Japan’s territorial claims to South Korea’s easternmost islets of Dokdo as well as the issue of elderly South Korean women who were forced to serve as sex slaves for Japan’s World War II soldiers.

South Korean and Japanese officials plan to meet in Tokyo on Friday to discuss the issue of the South Korean sex slaves, according to Seoul’s foreign ministry.

Last month, Park called for Japanese leaders’ determination to start a new future with South Korea. South Korea has repeatedly urged Japanese leaders to face up to history and take forward-looking measures for the South Korean sex slaves.

South Korea said its doors are open for dialogue with Japan, but the conditions must be met before Park can hold talks with Abe.

Park and Abe are set to attend the upcoming U.N. General Assembly next week, though it remains unclear whether the two leaders will meet.

South Korean Foreign Minister Yun Byung-se and his Japanese counterpart are also set to visit the U.N. headquarters in New York, setting the stage for their possible meeting.

Yun also met with Tokyo’s top envoy to Seoul earlier this week on the sidelines of a joint cultural event, a rare sign of thawing ties between the neighbors. (Yonhap)