SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — The leaders of South Korea, China and Japan will meet in Seoul next week to Tripartite talks for the first time in over 4 years South Korea’s presidential office said on Thursday the two countries would discuss ways to resume cooperation.
Since the first trilateral summit in 2008, the leaders of the three countries were supposed to hold such a meeting every year. However, the summit has been suspended since the last one in China in December 2019 due to the COVID-19 pandemic and the often complicated relations between Asian neighbors. ing.
With South Korean President Yoon Seok-yeol Chinese Premier Li Qiang South Korean Vice-Minister of National Security Kim Tae-hyo said in a press conference that talks between South Korea and Prime Minister Fumio Kishida are scheduled to take place in Seoul on Monday.
Chinese President Xi Jinping will not be attending.
Mr. Lee and Mr. Kishida were scheduled to arrive in South Korea on Sunday. Kim said the two men will meet individually with Yoon on Sunday afternoon and then attend a welcome dinner with the South Korean president. Japanese officials said bilateral talks between Kishida and Lee were still pending.
“This summit will mark a turning point for South Korea, Japan and China toward the complete restoration and normalization of the tripartite cooperation system,” Kim said.
Kim said the three leaders will discuss cooperation on six themes proposed by South Korea: people-to-people exchanges, climate change, trade, health and aging, technology, and disasters. He said these discussions will be included in a joint statement after the summit.
Kim said the three leaders will also discuss unspecified regional and international political issues, as well as how to jointly respond to global political crises and contribute to international peace. Japan’s Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshimasa Hayashi said the three leaders share responsibility for peace and prosperity in the region, and the meeting is important for the entire region.
These three countries, which are closely linked economically and culturally, account for about 25% of the world’s gross domestic product. However, efforts to strengthen cooperation between the three countries often stall due to a variety of intertwined issues, including historical issues. Japan’s wartime aggression And that Strategic competition between China and the United States.
South Korea and Japan are both important military allies of the United States, with a combined 80,000 U.S. troops stationed there. South Korea and Japan are strengthening their trilateral security partnership with the United States in response to North Korea’s progress in its nuclear program and China’s increasing assertiveness in the region. This infuriates China and North Korea.
Observers say the tripartite meeting comes at a time when the three Asian nations share a need to improve relations. South Korea and Japan want to maintain good ties with China, their largest trading partner, but they also say Beijing does not want to see greater security cooperation between Seoul, Tokyo and Washington.
Kim Yeol-soo, a researcher at the Korea Military Institute, said, “If the current situation continues, South Korea, the United States, and Japan will likely deepen their cooperation and become a tool to check and contain China.In that sense, China will I have no choice but to think that strengthening ties with Japan is in the national interest.”
Baek Yu-young, a professor at Seoul’s Yonsei University, said it would be easier for South Korea and Japan to negotiate with China in a trilateral system than bilaterally.
Relations between South Korea and Japan have been fluctuating greatly due to issues stemming from Japan’s colonial rule of the Korean Peninsula from 1910 to 1945. However, relations between the two countries have improved significantly since 2023 as the two countries have taken a series of major steps. Beyond its history We will strengthen cooperation in the face of common challenges such as North Korea’s nuclear program and supply chain vulnerabilities.
South Korea, Japan and the United States hope that China, North Korea’s main ally and biggest donor, will use its influence to persuade Pyongyang to abandon its nuclear program.
Although China does not officially support North Korea’s nuclear program, it has secretly provided aid to avoid full implementation of UN sanctions against North Korea and push its impoverished socialist neighbor into a corner. It is suspected that Experts say China believes it is in its strategic interests for North Korea to act as a bulwark against U.S. influence on the Korean peninsula.
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Associated Press reporters Yong Jun Chang in Seoul and Mari Yamaguchi in Tokyo contributed to this report.
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