The foreign ministers of South Korea and Japan on Wednesday discussed preparations for a trilateral summit with China but produced no agreement on whether to hold a bilateral meeting of their leaders for the first time in more than three years.

The meeting between Seoul's foreign minister, Yun Byung-se, and his Japanese counterpart, Fumio Kishida, came amid speculation that South Korean President Park Geun-hye and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe could hold their first bilateral talks when Seoul hosts a trilateral summit with China and Japan.

"Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has publicly expressed hope for a meeting (with Park) many times, and (the Japanese minister) expressed such hope in today's talks as well," Yun told reporters after the meeting with Kishida in New York on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly.

"With that in mind, we are now focused on making the Korea-China-Japan summit a success," Yun said. "We will review the issue of a bilateral summit at the next stage while conducting follow-up consultations between working-level officials at the director-general level."

Yun said the two sides talked a lot about preparations for the trilateral summit.

South Korea and Japan have not held a bilateral summit since 2012 as their relations have been frayed badly over history and territorial issues, including Tokyo's attempt to whitewash the country's wartime crimes, including its sexual enslavement of Korean women during World War II.

But the ties have shown signs of improvement after Abe pledged in a war anniversary statement last month to honor the country's past apologies for wartime atrocities, and Park reacted positively to it.

Earlier this month, Park and Chinese President Xi Jinping agreed to hold a trilateral cooperation summit with Abe in Seoul in October or November. The agreement has raised hope that Park and Abe could hold their first formal bilateral summit on its sidelines.

In Wednesday's talks, the two sides also held in-depth discussions on how to move relations between the two countries forward, Yun said, adding that he explained to Kishida how important it is to resolve the sexual slavery issue at an early date.

"I spoke a lot about the point that this is an extremely important element in improving relations between the two countries," he said.

The sexual slavery issue has been the biggest thorn in frayed relations between Japan and South Korea, with Seoul demanding Tokyo take steps to address the grievances of elderly Korean victims of the atrocity and Japan refusing to do so.

Historians estimate that up to 200,000 women, mainly from Korea, which was a Japanese colony from 1910 to 1945, were forced to work in front-line brothels for Japanese soldiers during World War II. But Japan has long attempted to water down the atrocity.

In Seoul, the Foreign Ministry also described it as a "core history" issue.

"Minister Yun emphasized the need for resolving the comfort women issue at an early date to bring about the virtuous cycle of developing South Korea-Japan relations," it said in a statement on the results of the Yun-Kishida talks. It was their fourth bilateral meeting this year.

Yun also urged Japan to keep its promise related to the listing of its 23 early industrial sites as UNESCO world heritage. Some of the facilities used Koreans as forced labor, while Korea was under Japan's brutal colonial rule from 1910-45.

Japan vowed to set up information centers near the relevant locations to publicize the history.

On Japan's new defense policy aimed at expanding the role and scope of the country's troops, Yun expressed hope for "close consultations" between the neighboring countries.

Kishida replied that his government will continue to push for the initiative in a "transparent manner," according to the ministry. (Yonhap)