S. Korea, China, Japan hold talks this week for discussions on trilateral summit

South Korea, China and Japan held a series of meetings in Seoul on Monday ahead of their trilateral high-level talks this week to discuss resuming the long-stalled summit of their leaders.

On Tuesday, South Korean Deputy Foreign Minister Chung Byung-won is set to hold the Senior Officials Meeting (SOM) with Takehiro Funakoshi, Japan’s senior deputy foreign minister, and Nong Rong, China’s assistant minister of foreign affairs, in Seoul to discuss restarting the cooperation mechanism among the three neighbors.

Ahead of the three-way talks, Chung held separate bilateral talks with his Japanese and Chinese counterparts on Monday, a ministry official said, amid a push to resume a possible trilateral summit.

Separately, South Korean Foreign Minister Park Jin also met with Chung, Funakoshi and Nong at the ministry earlier in the day.

“Korea, Japan and China are close neighbors that cannot be separated from each other,” Park said before the meeting. “It is therefore important to produce tangible outcomes, which will produce benefits that can be felt by the people of the three countries.”

Park also asked the delegates to “work closely together to make something possible within this year.”

Three-way summits among the three neighbors — first held in December 2008 — have been suspended since 2019 following a dispute between South Korea and Japan over forced labor compensation rulings and the pandemic.

Talks on the need to revive tripartite summit diplomacy have surfaced following a thaw in the frozen ties between Seoul and Tokyo since the launch of the current South Korean administration of President Yoon Suk Yeol in May of last year.

As the current chair of the trilateral summit, South Korea has been pushing to host the next meeting before the end of the year.