Top diplomats of S. Korea, China, Japan to hold talks in Busan this weekend

The top diplomats of South Korea, China and Japan will hold trilateral talks in the southeastern port city of Busan this weekend, Seoul’s foreign ministry said Friday, a gathering expected to focus on preparations to resume the long-suspended summit of the three neighbors.

Foreign Minister Park Jin will meet with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi and Japanese Foreign Minister Yoko Kamikawa on Sunday for broad discussions on ways to boost trilateral cooperation and other regional and global issues, Seoul’s foreign ministry said.

On Sunday, Park will hold separate bilateral talks with Wang and Kamikawa, respectively, before inviting the two ministers to a luncheon meeting.

The three-way talks will take place after the luncheon.

Wang and Kamikawa are expected to arrive in Busan on Saturday.

The ministerial talks raise the prospect of reviving the trilateral summit among the leaders of the three Northeast Asian neighbors after a nearly four-year hiatus.

As the current rotating chair, Seoul has been pushing to host the summit before the end of this year.

The trilateral summit was last held in China’s southwestern city of Chengdu in December 2019.

It has not been held largely due to the COVID-19 pandemic outbreak and the deterioration in bilateral relations between Seoul and Tokyo over the issue of compensating Korean victims of forced labor during Japan’s 1910-45 colonial rule of the Korean Peninsula.

Talks of reviving the summit gathered momentum amid a dramatic warming of the Seoul-Tokyo relations after South Korea said in March it will compensate the Korean victims on its own without asking for contributions from Japanese companies.

In a senior officials’ meeting in late September, the three countries agreed to hold the tripartite summit at “the earliest convenient time.”

The ministers’ talks also come amid a rise in tensions after the North placed a military reconnaissance satellite into orbit Tuesday, a success believed to have been achieved with Russia’s help.

South Korea, the United States, Japan and Britain have accused the North of providing weapons and munitions to Russia for use in the war in Ukraine, in return for getting assistance in military technologies.

The North’s latest provocation and the growing military ties between Pyongyang and Moscow are expected to be a key agenda item at Sunday’s talks.

They are also likely to discuss efforts to promote three-way cooperation in forward-looking areas, such as sustainability and climate change, science and digital technologies, health and aging society, and people-to-people exchanges.

It will mark the first visit by Kamikawa since she took office in September. Wang last visited South Korea in September 2021.