S. Korean foreign minister to visit Japan

South Korea's Foreign Minister Yun Byung-se speaks during the session 'The Geopolitical Outlook' in the Swiss mountain resort of Davos January 23, 2015. [Photo/Agencies]

SEOUL - South Korean Foreign Minister Yun Byung-se will visit Japan this weekend for the first time under the Park Geun-hye government, Seoul's foreign ministry said Wednesday.

Yun will arrive in Tokyo Sunday to hold talks with Japanese Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida, and participate in the receptions Monday at the South Korean embassy there to mark the 50th anniversary of the normalized diplomatic relations between the two countries.

It will mark the first foreign minister's trip to Japan since South Korean President Park Geun-hye took office in February 2013.

South Korea and Japan normalized diplomatic ties on June 22, 1965, about 20 years after the Korean Peninsula was liberated from the 1910-45 Japanese colonial rule.

Yun was originally scheduled to visit Japan in April 2013, but he canceled the visit after the then Japanese finance minister paid tribute to the notorious Yasukuni Shrine, a symbol of Japan' s militaristic past as it honors about 2.4 million Japanese war dead, including 14 Class-A war criminals.

Yun and Kishida are expected to focus mainly on the issue of comfort women, or Korean women forced into sex enslavement by the Japanese Imperial Army at the military brothels during World War II.