To restart summit, cement ties

SEOUL, Nov 26 (AP): The top diplomats from South Korea, Japan and China met Sunday to discuss when to resume their leaders' trilateral summit after a four-year hiatus and how to strengthen cooperation among the three Northeast Asian neighbours.
Closely linked economically and culturally with one another, the three countries together account for about 25% of the global gross domestic product. But efforts to boost trilateral cooperation have often hit a snag because of a mix of issues including historical disputes stemming from Japan's wartime aggression and the strategic competition between China and the United States.
Meeting in the southeastern South Korean city of Busan, the foreign ministers of the three countries were to exchange opinions on preparations to restart the trilateral summit, ways to improve three-way cooperation and other regional and international issues, according to Seoul's Foreign Ministry.
In September, senior officials of the three nations agreed to restart the trilateral summit "at the earliest convenient time."
Since they held their first stand-alone, trilateral summit in 2008, the leaders of the three countries had been supposed to meet annually. But their summit has faced on-again, off-again suspensions and remains stalled since 2019. Their relationships are intertwined with a slew of complicated, touchy issues.
South Korea and Japan are key U.S. military allies, hosting a total of 80,000 American troops on their territories. Their recent push to beef up a trilateral security cooperation with the United States has angered China, which is extremely sensitive to any moves it perceives as seeking to contain its rise to dominance in Asia.
But some observers say that the fact that Chinese President Xi Jinping and President Joe Biden struck a conciliatory tone in their first face-to-face meeting in a year earlier this month would provide Seoul, Tokyo and Beijing with diplomatic rooms to maneuver to find ways to revive three-way cooperation.
"As the international society is at a historic turning point as it faces major challenges and changes, we hope to discuss our strategic significance of Japan-China-South Korea cooperation," Japanese Foreign Minister Yoko Kamikawa told reporters Friday.
Japanese officials said Sunday's foreign ministers' meeting would discuss North Korea's recent spy satellite launch and the Russian-Ukraine war as well as a resumption of the trilateral summit. The officials said that no joint statement was expected after the meeting. The three ministers held bilateral talks on the sidelines.
After her meeting with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi on Saturday, Kamikawa said she renewed Japan's demand that China remove its ban on seafood imports from Japan in response to Tokyo's discharge of treated radioactive wastewater from its tsunami-hit nuclear power plant.
Wang, for his part, said China opposed Japan's "irresponsible action" of releasing the wastewater and called for an independent monitoring mechanism of the process, according to the Chinese Foreign Ministry.