Hatoyama to visit S. Korea, meet President Lee on Oct. 9

SEOUL, Sept. 27 Kyodo -
Japanese Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama is scheduled to visit South Korea and
meet President Lee Myung Bak on Oct. 9, a South Korean government official said
Sunday.
Hatoyama will meet Lee on the eve of the trilateral summit to be held in
Beijing among China, Japan and South Korea.
By selecting South Korea as his first country to visit in Asia after taking
office on Sept. 16, Hatoyama apparently wants to show his stance of placing
emphasis on Japan-South Korea relations.
Hatoyama and Lee are expected to discuss bilateral ties and the North Korean
nuclear issue, according to Japanese and South Korean government sources.
They may also touch on the issue of a visit by Japanese Emperor Akihito to
South Korea and the issue of granting voting rights in Japanese local elections
to foreigners who are permanent residents of Japan, including South Koreans.
Lee earlier this month expressed hope that the emperor will visit South Korea
next year to ''put an end to the sense of distance'' between the two countries
as 2010 marks a century since the beginning of Japan's colonial rule of the
Korean Peninsula that ended in 1945.
Hatoyama and Lee are also expected to talk about responses to the global
financial crisis following last week's Group of 20 financial summit in
Pittsburgh and other global issues, including cuts in greenhouse gas emissions
and counterterrorism measures, the sources said.
Hatoyama and Lee held talks in New York last week on the sidelines of U.N.
General Assembly meetings.
They also met in Seoul in early June on Hatoyama's first overseas trip as
leader of the Democratic Party of Japan. He was elected DPJ president in
mid-May.
As part of the so-called ''shuttle diplomacy'' involving reciprocal visits by
the two countries' leaders, Hatoyama's predecessor Taro Aso visited Seoul in
January and Lee visited Tokyo in June.
==Kyodo