SEOUL: Chinese and Japanese officials were set to arrive in Seoul and meet with South Korea’s president differently on Sunday, a day before they gather for their first trilateral meeting in more than four times. No big news is expected from Monday’s multilateral South Korea-China-Japan meet. But only resuming their highest-level, three-way deals is a good sign and suggests the three Asian neighborhood are intent on improving their relationships.
A multilateral leaders ‘ conference was supposed to take place every following their annual meeting in 2008. But the conference has stalled since the last one in December 2019 in Chengdu, China because of the Covid-19 epidemic and complex relationships among the three locations.
After their visitors in Seoul on Sunday, Chinese Premier Li Qiang and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida are to maintain diplomatic talks with South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol to explore ways to promote teamwork and other problems, according to North Korean leaders. Li and Kishida are expected to meet unilaterally as also.
When Yoon, Li and Kishida meet for a multilateral conference on Monday, they’ll debate participation in six distinct areas- people-to-people exchanges, climate change, trade, health issues, technology and disaster responses, according to South Korea’s political office.
Private issues like North Korea’s nuclear programme, China’s say over self-governed Taiwan and territorial disputes in the South China Sea are not among the formal plan items. But some researchers say North Korea’s nuclear plan- which poses a significant safety risk to South Korea and Japan- will likely be discussed among the three frontrunners though it’s unclear whether and how much they would publicise the articles of their discussions.
The three neighbours are important trading partners to one another, and their cooperation is key to promoting regional peace and prosperity. But they’ve been repeatedly embroiled in bitter disputes over a range of historical and diplomatic issues originating from Japan’s wartime atrocities. China’s rise and a US push reinforce its Asian alliances have also significantly impacted their three-way ties in recent years.
South Korea and Japan are both vibrant democracies and key US military allies in the region, but their ties in past years suffered a huge setback over the issue of Korean forced labourers during the 1910-45 Japanese colonial period. Bilateral ties have warmed dramatically since last year, when Yoon took a major step toward moving beyond historical grievances to cope with shared challenges like North Korean nuclear threats, the intensifying Chinese-US rivalry and supply chain vulnerabilities.
Since 2022, North Korea has been engaged in an unprecedentedly provocative run of weapons tests to build powerful nuclear missiles capable of hitting key sites in the mainland US, South Korea and Japan. In response, South Korea, Japan and the US have expanded their trilateral security partnership, but that has drawn rebukes from China and North Korea.
South Korea, Japan and the US want China- North Korea’s major ally and economic pipeline- to use its leverage to persuade the North to abandon its nuclear ambitions. But China is believed to have clandestinely supported the impoverished North.
Experts say South Korea, China and Japan now share a need to improve ties. South Korea and Japan want better ties with China because it is their biggest trading partner. China, for its part, likely believes a further strengthening of the South Korea-Japan-US cooperation would hurt its national interests.
” With complex changes unfolding in our region and beyond, we hope that the forthcoming summit meeting will inject new impetus into the trilateral cooperation and provide better ways towards mutual benefit for the three countries,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin said Thursday.
