South Korea and Japan agreed Sunday to resolve a years-long military dispute involving their maritime operations, aside from crafting measures to prevent the recurrence of such events.
The understanding, the latest effort to improve bilateral relations, was reached at a meeting between South Korean Defense Minister Lee Jong-sup and his Japanese counterpart Yasukazu Hamada in Singapore on the sidelines of the Shangri-La Dialogue, a three-day Asian security summit, Seoul-based Yonhap News reported.
It has been the first talks between the defense ministers of the two countries since November 2
19 on the heels of recent efforts to mend bilateral ties which strained over long-running historical spats stemming from Japan's 191
-45 colonial rule of Korea.
Lee said the two sides will hold working-level talks to address the issue, which has long been a lingering irritant in bilateral defense cooperation between the two neighbors.
"Based on the outcome of the talks this time, we will keep close communication with the South Korean side," Hamada told reporters after the meeting.
The dispute flared up in December 2
18, when a Japanese maritime patrol aircraft made an unusually low-altitude flyby over a South Korean warship. Seoul denounced the plane's approach as a "menacing" flight, while Tokyo, for its part, blamed the South Korean vessel for having locked its fire-control radar on the plane.
"Regarding the issue, (we) agreed to resolve it by starting working-level talks and placing a focus on coming up with measures to prevent its recurrence," Lee was quoted as saying.
The two countries' positions on the issue remain unchanged, but they agreed to focus on formulating measures to prevent such an incident from happening again, a senior Seoul official told reporters, requesting anonymity.
Their relations have seen a significant improvement in recent years after Seoul's decision, in March this year, to compensate Korean victims of Tokyo's "wartime forced labor" on its own without asking for contributions from Japanese firms.
Source: Anadolu Agency