Japan's foreign minister was late Tuesday to begin a visit to South Korea focusing on ways to handle nuclear-armed North Korea and to strengthen newly-improved ties between Tokyo and Seoul.
Foreign Minister Hirofumi Nakasone will Wednesday meet his South Korean counterpart Yu Myung-Hwan and pay a courtesy call on President Lee Myung-Bak, the foreign ministry said.
It said the talks, a follow-up to last month's summit, will focus on bilateral relations, North Korea and cooperation on global issues.
Lee and Japan's Prime Minister Taro Aso agreed in January to put aside thorny historical and territorial disputes and to work together on issues ranging from combating recession to rebuilding Afghanistan.
"The ministers will discuss how to cooperate to resolve the North Korean issue as the United States has launched a new administration," a Seoul foreign ministry official told AFP on condition of anonymity.
They will also follow up a summit agreement for a joint development project in war-ravaged Afghanistan, he said.
The North is hostile to Lee's conservative government as well as to the Tokyo administration, which is pressing Pyongyang to account fully for the Japanese it kidnapped during the Cold War era.
US President Barack Obama is reviewing his North Korea policy. His Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will tour the region later this month.
"The meeting will take place just before Clinton's visit to Asia, so the exchange of opinions regarding the North Korean issue will be extremely important," a Japanese foreign ministry official said in Tokyo on condition of anonymity.
The ministers are "likely to have frank discussions on what to tell the Obama administration over North Korea as a united Japan-South Korea front."
Six-way talks aimed at dismantling the North's nuclear weapons programme are deadlocked by a dispute over how to verify its atomic activities. They group the two Koreas, the United States, China, Russia and Japan.
Officials in Seoul and Washington also say there are signs the North is preparing to test its longest-range missile.
The North carried out long-range missile tests in 1998 and 2006, sparking international condemnation and alarming Japan.
Yonhap news agency said the ministers may also discuss Tokyo's request for a meeting between a former North Korean agent living in South Korea and the family of a Japanese abductee.
Seoul and Tokyo said the issue will not be on the official agenda.
Kim Hyun-Hee, who was sentenced to death for blowing up a South Korean airliner in 1987 but later pardoned, has told local media she wants to meet the relatives of Yaeko Taguchi, who was abducted by North Korea in 1978.
The North has said Taguchi died in a car crash in July 1986. But Kim, who took Japanese lessons from Taguchi, said she was alive until at least 1987 . jkw/sm/cc
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