Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Economy and Finance Choo Kyung-ho (left) and Japanese Minister of Finance Suzuki Shunichi.
Choo Kyung-ho, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Economy and Finance, will meet with Suzuki Shunichi, Minister of Finance of Japan, in Tokyo on the 29th to hold the 8th Korea-Japan Finance Ministers' Meeting. This is the first finance ministers' meeting between the two countries in about seven years.
The Ministry of Economy and Finance announced on the 2nd that Kim Sung-wook, Director General for International Economic Affairs, held a vice ministerial-level meeting with Kanda Masato, Vice Minister of Finance of Japan, at the Seoul Government Complex on the 1st and coordinated this schedule.
At the meeting, Deputy Prime Minister Choo is expected to discuss bilateral cooperation projects with Minister Suzuki. The agenda includes economic trends in both countries and globally, follow-up measures from the G7 Finance Ministers' Meeting, cooperation at the G20 Finance Ministers' Meeting, third-country infrastructure investment cooperation, bilateral and regional financial cooperation, and other issues such as taxation and tariffs.
The Korea-Japan Finance Ministers' Meeting, which began in 2006, has not been held since August 2016, when Yoo Il-ho, then Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Economy and Finance, met with Aso Taro, then Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance of Japan. This was due to the freezing of relations between the two countries following the installation of the comfort women statue in front of the Japanese Consulate General in Busan in 2017 and the South Korean Supreme Court's forced labor compensation ruling in 2019.
Meanwhile, on the 2nd of last month, Deputy Prime Minister Choo met with Minister Suzuki, who visited Korea to attend the Asian Development Bank (ADB) Annual Meeting in Songdo, Incheon, and they agreed to hold a ministerial-level meeting at an appropriate time this year.
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