SEOUL/TOKYO, April 17 (Reuters) - South Korea and
Japan's finance ministers will hold a bilateral meeting early
next month for the first time in seven years, heralding closer
cooperation in economic policy that has been hampered by
diplomatic conflict.
South Korean Finance Minister Choo Kyung-ho told reporters
during a visit to the United States that he has agreed to meet
Japanese Finance Minister Shunichi Suzuki, according to a media
pool report.
They will meet on the sidelines of the Asian Development
Bank (ADB) annual meetings, due to be held in Incheon, South
Korea May 2-5, although other details have yet to be decided,
Choo said.
"It is significant in that it will be the first step toward
reviving regular bilateral meetings," Choo said, without
elaborating.
Regular annual meetings between the two countries' finance
ministers have been suspended since 2016 due to disputes over
wartime history.
But last month at a summit between South Korea's Yoon Suk
Yeol and Japan's Fumio Kishida, the two neighbours promised to
put aside their difficult shared history and said they would
work together to counter regional security challenges.
Financial markets will likely pay close attention to whether
the finance ministers will discuss resuming a bilateral currency
swap arrangement - one that had served as backstop against any
potential currency crisis but which expired in February 2015.
(Reporting by Choonsik Yoo in Seoul, Tetsushi Kajimoto and
Yoshifumi Takemoto and in Tokyo; Editing by Edwina Gibbs)
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