Foreign Ministers Agree on Summit in the Future

Minister for Foreign Affairs Yoko Kamikawa had a meeting with the Foreign Ministers of Republic of Korea and China in Busan, South Korea, on Sunday. The trilateral foreign ministers’ meeting was held for the first time since August 2019. The three ministers agreed on having the summit meeting of those three governments “at the earliest convenient time” without any specific schedule. The meeting reflected China’s approach to Japan and ROK which relationship has been showing improvements.

 

The trilateral leaders’ meeting has not been held since December 2019, due to the outbreak of COVID-19 and deterioration of bilateral relationships of the members. While there was an expectation for the foreign ministers’ meeting to fix the schedule of the summit meeting, the ministers only reconfirmed the necessity of resuming the trilateral summit. It is likely that Beijing could not have a good outlook on the trilateral summit so far, although it was concerned on the relationship of Japan, South Korea and United States getting closer.

 

Noticing the differences and problems among those three countries, the ministers focused on the issues they could agree on. According to the news release of Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan, they concurred on the areas of people-to-people exchange, science and technology, sustainable development, public health, economic cooperation and trade, and peace and security.

 

Disputable issues were mainly discussed in bilateral meetings. Kamikawa firmly demanded Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi to immediately lift the import ban on the sea products from Japan. Noting that Japan’s discharge of Fukushima “nuclear-contaminated water” into the ocean concerned marine safety and public health, Wang said China opposed Japan’s irresponsible action. But they began to consider exchanging the visits each other.

 

In the meeting with ROK Minister of Foreign Affairs Park Jin, Kamikawa expressed her regret on the judgement of Seoul High Court in favor of former “comfort women,” denying the state immunity. Newspapers in Japan reported that Park said that ROK would pay respect to the bilateral agreement in 2025, in which the both governments confirmed a “final and irreversible” solution of the comfort women issue, as an official agreement.

 

Wang and Park exchanged their views on North Korea, which recently launched a reconnaissance satellite. Park requestedChina to play a constructive role, as noting that it would be a common interest of ROK and China to stop North Korea’s provocations. Wang emphasized that China has always played and continues to play a constructive role.

 

Those bilateral issues should be addressed before fixing the schedule of the trilateral summit. An official of ROK government told in a TV news program that the three leaders might not be able to meet this year. There is no optimistic view that the bilateral issues are all settled next year or later.

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