A woman walks past an advertisement with Japanese and South Korea's flags at a shop in Shin Okubo area in Tokyo, Aug 2, 2019. The EUGENE HOSHIKO AP TOKYO Japan Foreign Minister Yoshimasa Hayashi met with the new South Korean ambassador to Japan, Yun Duk-min, for the first time, as relations between Tokyo and Seoul show signs of improvement.
After meeting with Hayashi at the foreign ministry, Yun said that we will work hard together to make sure we have a better relationship.
Yun arrived in Japan last month and the meeting followed the inauguration of South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol in May.
Japan and South Korea have struggled to maintain healthy political ties for a number of years during the former administrations of Japan's Shinzo Abe and South Korea's Moon Jae-In.
The two sides had been arguing over a number of issues, including those relating to wartime labor and trade disputes.
Both countries have taken steps to mend ties under the leadership of President Yoon.
Political watchers here believe that both sides will try to reach a resolution on outstanding issues including the potential liquidation of Japanese corporate assets in South Korea that plaintiffs in wartime forced labor lawsuits have seized.
South Korea's Supreme Court is expected to issue a decision on the potential liquidation of assets from two Japanese companies, although Japan remains adamant that there will be serious reprisals for bilateral ties should the move go ahead.
In June of this year, South Korean Foreign Minister Park Jin intimated that his side intended to abide by a bilateral pact made with Japan in 2015 to settle the issue of Korean girls and women forced to work as comfort women in Japanese military brothels, a previous development that signaled thawing ties.
Seoul and Tokyo agreed in December 2015 to finally settle the issue of Korean women forced into sexual slavery under the 1910 -- 45 Japanese colonization of the Korean Peninsula.
The agreement was effectively scrapped under the previous South Korean administration, and the Reconciliation and Healing Foundation, which Japan provided funds to help women and their families under the agreement, was dissolved in 2019.
South Korea said the deal fell a long way short of the reparations due to the immeasurable suffering suffered by the comfort women and Japan's seeming inability to voice its remorse, as evidenced by efforts to whitewash its wartime wrongdoings.