Foreign Minister Yohei Kono and his South Korean counterpart, Lee Joung Binn, agreed Wednesday to work on having South Korean President Kim Dae Jung visit Japan in late September.
In their meeting on the sidelines of Thursday's Association of Southeast Asian Nations Regional Forum meeting in Bangkok, Kono and Lee agreed to make preparations for the visit, which would include a tour of an as yet unspecified region of Japan.
Lee expressed his appreciation for the adoption July 21 of the Group of Eight special statement on the Korean Peninsula. Japan chaired this year's G8 summit, held over the weekend in Okinawa.
The statement welcomed the historic mid-June summit between Kim Dae Jung and North Korean leader Kim Jong Il and urged the two sides to continue their dialogue, saying it would contribute to stability in Northeast Asia.
The two also reconfirmed the importance of the inter-Korean summit, during which the leaders called for reconciliation and eventual reunification of the two halves of the Korean Peninsula, and the followup meetings aimed at realizing these goals, the official said.
Lee said the South Korean government wants to call on the North to cooperate toward reconciliation, not just bilaterally but also on the international stage, and to also work on improving relations with Japan and the United States, the official said.