SEOUL, Feb. 10 -- South Korea's top diplomat on Monday mentioned the need to forge an intelligence-sharing pact with China to enhance trust between the two countries.

Foreign Minister Yun Byung-se told lawmakers during the interpellation session at the parliamentary headquarters that "it needs to review" whether the South Korea-China accord on sharing military intelligence will be necessary.

Yun said that the two neighbors have been cooperating in a variety of areas, including national defense, since the Park Geun- hye administration was launched last year.

South Korea's past push for an intelligence-sharing pact with Japan was aborted in mid-2012 as the government secretly sought to reach such deal with its former colonial ruler and caused strong backlash from the public.

Yun said it would be inappropriate to view relationships between South Korea, the United States and Japan from the past Cold War-era perspective, noting that relations with China and Russia as well as those with the United States and Japan became important.

Touching on strained ties between Seoul and Tokyo, Yun said that it was the Japanese government led by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe that served as the biggest obstacle to improved relations, describing their actions and words as history revisionist.

The minister said that higher-level dialogue between the two countries will be made possible when Japan takes sincere action toward its past atrocities during its colonial rule of South Korea from 1910 to 1945. He added that Seoul was, nevertheless, reviewing various ways as to how to thaw the frosty ties between Seoul and Tokyo.

South Korean President Park Geun-hye has refused to hold a summit with her Japanese counterpart since she took office in February last year. Park has cited Japanese leadership's wrong perception of history.

Japan's cabinet members, including Abe, recently visited the controversial Yasukuni Shrine, a symbol of Japan's militaristic past as it enshrines 14 World War II class-A war criminals.