SEOUL: The top diplomats of South Korea and Japan will hold talks next week on the sidelines of a global forum, Seoul’s foreign ministry announced today. 

Foreign Minister Kang Kyung-wha plans to meet her counterpart, Taro Kono, on Wednesday. The two are scheduled to attend the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. Their talks come amid soured ties between the neighboring countries over shared history and a conflict over a recent military operation in the East Sea.

Japan has fiercely protested South Korean Supreme Court rulings ordering Japanese firms to compensate Koreans for forced labor during World War II. Tokyo also claimed a South Korean naval warship locked a fire-control radar on its maritime patrol aircraft in Dember. Seoul’s defense authorities dismissed the assertion as groundless, saying the warship was operating normally on a humanitarian search mission.