South Korea and Japan agreed Thursday to ramp up efforts to boost their economic cooperation, despite strained bilateral relations stemming from a shared history.
The neighbors reached the agreement during their high-level economic consultative meeting held in Seoul, the second of its kind since President Park Geun-hye took office in February 2013. The two Asian economic powerhouses have regularly held the consultative meeting since its inception in 1999.
"Both sides positively assessed the sustained development of their economic ties over the past 50 years and shared the view that they should more closely cooperate in order to make their economic cooperative relations more forward-looking," the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement.
Since establishing diplomatic ties in 1965, bilateral trade jumped 400-fold to an estimated US$90 billion in 2014, the ministry said, adding that the countries positively assessed their economic partnership on the international stage.
Private economic associations of the two countries are planning a number of celebratory events to mark the 50th anniversary of bilateral diplomatic ties this year and the two governments agreed to review ways to back up the events, the statement also said.
They also agreed to find ways to support joint overseas business projects pursued by companies from the two countries, it added.
Discussions about South Korea's import ban on Japanese seafood imposed after the Fukushima nuclear reactor accident in 2011 took up a major part of the Thursday meeting, a South Korean ministry official said, adding that Seoul is still far from lifting the ban.
"It's hard to say (South Korea's moving toward lifting it). We will decide it later, after reviewing the result of private experts' examination," the official said. A group of South Korean experts plan to depart for Japan next week for the examination, he added.
He also highlighted that "Having had frank, constructive, serious discussions on all kinds of issues (with Japan) is a very positive sign, per se, at a time when the South Korea-Japan relations are under various (negative) assessments."
"The latest meeting was very meaningful in that both countries had comprehensive reviews of bilateral economic issues and interests and discussed ways to strengthen cooperation in a forward-looking manner," according to the ministry statement.
This year's meeting comes amid an unusually high diplomatic tension between the neighbors. The countries have been at odds for a few years over territorial and other issues stemming from their shared history.
President Park has yet to hold her first one-on-one summit meeting with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, although they have met several times on the international stage. (Yonhap)
