Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol hold talks in Seoul on May 26, 2024 (POOL/AFP/Ahn Young-joon)
The prime ministers of China and Japan arrived in Seoul on Monday for a trilateral summit with the South Korean president, which is expected to focus on economic issues.
Ahead of this summit, South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol met separately on Sunday afternoon with Li Qiang for China and Fumio Kishida for Japan.
At the end of his meeting with the Chinese Prime Minister, Mr. Yoon highlighted the “important challenges” facing China and South Korea “in the field of international affairs”. He also said he hoped that the two countries would continue “to strengthen their cooperation”.
Mr. Li, who is making his first visit to South Korea since taking office in March 2023, for his part declared that Beijing wanted to work with Seoul.
(POOL/AFP/Ahn Young-joon)
The South Korean president then spoke with Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, emphasizing after their meeting that exchanges between the two countries had “increased considerably over the past year.” For his part, Kishida said Seoul and Tokyo should further strengthen their cooperation.
The three leaders are scheduled to have dinner together on Sunday evening.
It is the day after these bilateral discussions that a tripartite summit will begin on Monday, the first meeting at this level in five years, due to the Covid-19 pandemic but also diplomatic and historical disputes between South Korea and the former colonizer, Japan.
The two countries still have legal disputes to resolve over Japan’s 1910-1945 occupation of the Korean Peninsula.
Mr. Yoon, president since 2022, seeks to bury the hatchet with Japan in the face of growing threats from nuclear-armed North Korea.
Since the last trilateral summit, “our regional and global landscapes have changed significantly,” Kishida said before leaving for Seoul, adding that this new meeting was “highly significant.”
– Economic questions on the agenda –
Discussions at the trilateral summit are likely to revolve around economic topics rather than thorny geopolitical issues, experts predict.
And this despite increasingly advanced military tests carried out by North Korea and large-scale military maneuvers by Beijing around Taiwan on Thursday and Friday.
South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol (L) and Chinese Prime Minister Li Qiang on May 26, 2024 in Seoul (POOL/AFP/Ahn Young-joon)
Issues related to Pyongyang “are difficult to resolve quickly,” noted an official in Mr. Yoon’s office.
“A joint statement is currently under discussion,” the official added, specifying that Seoul would try “to a certain extent” to include the region’s security problems.
An editorial in the South Korean daily Hankook Ilbo highlights “the importance of cooperation between the three countries, which represent 20% of the world’s population and trade, or 25% of total GDP.”
“It is crucial that the three nations have the will to overcome their differences of opinion,” adds the newspaper.
China is North Korea’s largest trading partner as well as a strong diplomatic ally. She prefers to criticize joint military exercises between the United States and South Korea rather than condemning Pyongyang’s weapons tests.
Last August, Seoul, Tokyo and Washington announced a “new chapter” in their security relations following a historic summit at Camp David, in the United States.
Beijing had protested after a statement at the summit in which the three allies criticized China’s “aggressive behavior” in the South China Sea.
Last year, Mr Yoon said tensions over Taiwan were due to “attempts to change the status quo by force”.
China recently condemned the presence of a South Korean lawmaker and Seoul’s representative in Taipei at the inauguration ceremony of Taiwanese President Lai Ching-te.
© 2024 AFP
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