Japan's chief nuclear envoy was due in Seoul on Monday for talks on North Korea and bilateral relations, a day after Tokyo's foreign minister made a surprise resignation over allegations of illegal political donations.
Shinsuke Sugiyama, director-general of the Japanese foreign ministry's Asian and Oceanian affairs bureau, is scheduled to arrive around 11 a.m. before having a lunch meeting with Chang Won-sam, a foreign ministry director-general handling Japanese affairs.
His three-day trip came a day after Japanese Foreign Minister Seiji Maehara quit abruptly over allegations of receiving illegal political donations, casting doubt over whether planned diplomatic events would go ahead as scheduled, including an annual foreign ministers' meeting of South Korea, Japan and China set for later this month.
Sugiyama pushing ahead with the previously planned visit, despite the minister's resignation, shows that Tokyo considers relations with South Korea very important, a foreign ministry official said on customary condition of anonymity.
Later Monday, the Japanese diplomat is scheduled to pay a visit to First Vice Foreign Minister Park Suk-hwan and meet with Kim Hyoung-zhin, director-general handling relations with the United States.
On Tuesday, he plans to meet with Seoul's chief nuclear envoy Wi Sung-lac.
It is Sugiyama's first independent trip to Seoul since taking office in January. When he visited Seoul in January, he was part of Maehara's entourage. Sugiyama served as political affairs minister at Japan's Embassy in Seoul from 2000-2004.
Relations between South Korea and Japan have been in good shape after Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan offered a renewed apology in August last year for Japan's 1910-45 colonial rule of the Korean Peninsula, promising to return centuries-old royal Korean books to Seoul and take other steps backing up the apology.
Japan promised to transfer the 1,205 volumes of royal books, known as "Uigwe," after winning approval from parliament, but a deadlock in Japanese politics has delayed the return.
The issue is expected to be among key topics that Sugiyama will discuss in Seoul.
The Japanese diplomat is also expected to talk about ways to prevent the upcoming outcome of Japan's review of middle-school history and other textbooks from hurting relations between the two countries.
Japanese school textbooks accused of laying claims to the South's easternmost islets of Dokdo and glorifying the country's wartime past have long been considered a thorn in relations between the two sides as resentment over Japan's colonial rule of Korea still runs deep here.
Japan is conducting a review of 16 history and other middle school textbooks and is expected to announce its results in March or April.
On North Korea, Sugiyama is expected to discuss strategies to deal with Pyongyang's uranium enrichment program at the U.N. Security Council as well as to create the right conditions for resuming six-party talks on ending the North's nuclear programs.