SEOUL, South Korea — The chief diplomats from China, Japan and South Korea agreed Sunday to hold a trilateral summit of their three leaders, but did not specify a time frame for the meeting that will be the first among the three in nearly four years.
“We, the three ministers, reaffirmed the agreement to hold the summit, the pinnacle of the trilateral cooperation system, at the earliest, mutually convenient time and agreed to accelerate the preparations necessary for the summit,” South Korean Foreign Minister Park Jin said.
The statement followed talks Sunday between Mr. Park and his Chinese and Japanese counterparts in the South Korean port city of Busan, where a key agenda item was to reach an agreement on holding a future trilateral leaders’ summit.
The ministerial-level meeting in Busan also focused on the broader goal of upgrading cooperation between the three economic powerhouses of Northeast Asia, which together account for about 25% of the global gross domestic product.
China is the biggest trade partner of Japan and South Korea. Grounds for future trilateral cooperation include climate change, digitization and health and science technologies.
But the effort to boost cooperation has proved a tall order, given the increasing weight of geopolitics hanging over the region. South Korea and Japan are close U.S. strategic allies but continue to have historical disagreements of their own, while China is mounting a power competition with Washington.
However, there have been some grounds for optimism during the nearly four years since the last China-Japan-South Korea leaders’ summit was held in Chengdu, China, in December 2019.
The three signed on to the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) in 2020 — a free-trade agreement linking 15 Indo-Pacific economies responsible for some 30% of global GDP.
The RCEP has the potential to be the world’s largest free trade zone, although the phase-in of multiple agreements under the partnership has a 20-year implementation period. The sticky matter of labor issues is also not included in RCEP, and some critics say the partnership’s tariff-reduction targets lack ambition.
Meanwhile, the COVID pandemic dealt a blow to China’s regional reputation during the years immediately following the inking of the RCEP. And while Chinese President Xi Jinping held power in 2019, the leadership teams and geopolitical postures of Seoul and Tokyo have changed.
Japan and South Korea — shocked by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and wary of China’s expanding regional footprint — have been significantly upgrading diplomatic, political and security ties over the past 18 months.
U.S.-China tensions also loom in the backdrop. While Washington is the key ally of the two Asian democracies, the passing of the presidential baton from Donald Trump to Joseph R. Biden in 2021 saw no toning down of Washington’s hardline stance toward Xi-era China.
China’s discomfort with the western lean of South Korea and Japan is widely seen to undergird geopolitical tensions between Beijing, Seoul and Tokyo.
“China, Korea and Japan must play a positive role in regional and global development with a more honest attitude,” Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi warned at the start of Sunday’s talk in Busan.
For their part, Seoul and Tokyo want the Chinese to take a firmer stance against North Korea, as Beijing is seen to hold leverage over Pyongyang due to China’s position as a primary supplier of critical fuel and food to North Korea.
Despite being a sitting member of the U.N. Security Council, China has declined to condemn recent ballistic missile and satellite launches by Pyongyang.
On a separate front, Mr. Wang and Japanese Foreign Minister Yoko Kamikawa held bilateral talks Saturday on the issue of Japan’s release of treated, irradiated water into the Pacific from the crippled Fukushima Nuclear Plant.
Though no dangerous radiation has been discovered in offshore waters since the controlled outflow began in August, China has banned all imports of Japanese seafood.
The two sides agreed to continue dialogue on the matter.
Even Japan-South Korea relations — noted for a recent upsurge in bilateral amity — have suffered hiccups.
Seoul High Court last week ruled that Tokyo must pay direct compensation to a group of 16 “comfort women” — women who labored in Japan’s wartime military brothels, or their descendants. The ruling overturned a previous judgment on the matter.
Japan insists it “finally and irreversibly” ended the dispute by formally apologizing and paying compensation in 2015.
Mr. Park reportedly told Ms. Kamikawa in Busan that Seoul “respects” the 2015 deal. But there was no clarity on how matters will henceforth proceed legally.
In her own remarks, Ms. Kamikawa alluded to the poor China-Japan-South Korea relations that have been the norm in recent years by calling for a broad reset.
“Whether we can provide resilience with the power to overcome … challenges depends on how we can collaborate with ideas that are not tied to existing methods,” the Japanese foreign minister said. “I would like to return to this starting point and make today’s talks an opportunity to restart cooperation between the three countries.”
• Andrew Salmon can be reached at asalmon@washingtontimes.com.
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