Seoul, Nov 3 (IANS): South Korea and China will hold the 14th round of bilateral talks this week to secure a free trade agreement (FTA), Seoul's trade ministry said Monday.

South Korean Trade Minister Yoon Sang-jick and Chinese Commerce Minister Gao Hucheng will meet in Beijing Thursday to discuss the outstanding issues, Xinhua reported.

The two countries have already completed negotiations on eight out of the 22 chapters, including trade remedy, sanitary and phytosanitary (SPS) and technical barriers to trade (TBT), competition, environment and e-commerce.

They came close to an agreement on another eight chapters, which included customs clearance, investment, transparency, communications and intellectual property rights.

The two trade ministers will intensively discuss the goods liberalisation issue, a core part of the FTA negotiations, this week along with the remaining five issues of liberalising service markets, non-tariff barriers, rules of origin, finance and economic cooperation.

Negotiations for the bilateral trade pact gained momentum after Chinese President Xi Jinping's visit to Seoul and talks with his South Korean counterpart Park Geun-hye in July.

The two leaders had agreed to make efforts to conclude the negotiations within this year.

China and South Korea had completed the first stage of the FTA talks in September last year with a total of seven rounds of negotiations.