S. Korea, Japan to hold summit next month in Seoul

SEOUL, Dec. 27 (Yonhap) -- Japanese Prime Minister Taro Aso will visit Seoul next
month to hold a summit with President Lee Myung-bak in a full-scale resumption of
the biannual shuttle summit between the sides, officials here said Saturday.
"Prime Minister Taro Aso plans to make a two-day trip to South Korea between Jan.
10-12," a South Korean foreign ministry official said. "An exact schedule is
under consultations."
The planned summit is aimed at discussing not only bilateral issues, but also the
North Korean nuclear problem and other global concerns, he added.
It will be the third bilateral meeting this year between the current leaders of
the two neighboring nations whose ties are often frayed over historical and
territorial issues.
Japanese and South Korean leaders began one-on-one shuttle diplomacy in July
2004, but it came to a halt a year later when South Korea protested at then
Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's repeated visits to the Yasukuni
Shrine in Tokyo that hold Japan's war dead, including war criminals.
In April, two months after his inauguration, President Lee visited Tokyo for a
summit with then Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda. They agreed to pursue
"future-oriented" relations between the two nations.
But the cordial mood was ruptured again in July, when the Japanese education
ministry made public an educational guideline for middle schools urging
instructors to teach that Dokdo's ownership is disputed.
Dokdo, which lies in the East Sea between the neighboring nations, is effectively
controlled by South Korea, but Japan has made attempts to lay claim to the rocky
islets.
Tokyo, however, dropped the description of Dokdo in its draft of a new teaching
manual for high school students that was released earlier this week.
(END)