Leaders of Korea, China, Japan to meet Sunday
Park, Abe agree to hold summit Nov. 2
By Kang Seung-woo
Park Geun-hye
Shinzo Abe
President Park Geun-hye will host Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and Chinese Prime Minister Li Keqiang for a trilateral meeting in Seoul, Sunday, Cheong Wa Dae announced Wednesday.
In addition, Park will hold her first bilateral summit with Abe the following day, which will include discussions on the issue of Japan’s wartime sexual slavery, officials said.
“The three-way meeting will be held at Cheong Wa Dae on Sunday afternoon. Through the talks, the leaders will seek ways to boost trilateral cooperation between the countries, while holding in-depth discussions on the situation in Northeast Asia and international economic trends,” said Kim Kyou-hyun, the senior presidential secretary for foreign affairs and national security.
Kim said that the leaders will attend a business summit and a reception dinner following the talks.
Korea currently holds the rotating chair of the trilateral talks that were suspended after the 2012 event — the fifth of its kind — due to heightened regional tensions over historical and territorial issues.
This year’s event is expected to mainly deal with North Korea’s nuclear ambitions by adopting a joint declaration.
While the Kim Jong-un regime has refused to give up its nuclear weapons program, the leaders are expected to make clear their opposition in the joint declaration to the North’s potential provocations that may raise tension in the region.
The joint declaration will be the latest in a series of calls for the North’s nuclear disarmament made during last month’s summits between Park and Chinese President Xi Jinping, U.S. President Barack Obama and Xi, and and Park and Obama, which will put the North under growing pressure to halt its nuclear development.
Although the long-overdue Korea-Japan summit will be held on the sidelines of the trilateral talks — the subordinate event — it is expected to be in the full glare of the public spotlight, given that Park will sit face-to-face with Abe for the first time since the two heads of state took office more than two years ago due to the “comfort women” issue.
Despite President Park’s calls for the Japanese government to officially apologize for the sexual enslavement of Korean women forced to provide sex for Japanese troops before and during World War II, Abe has remained mum on the demand and attempted to whitewash the nation’s wartime aggression.
For this reason, Park has refused to hold a formal meeting with Abe.
However, Park hinted at a summit with Abe during her trip to Washington, D.C. earlier this month by saying that she is open to holding a bilateral meeting with him. On Monday, Cheong Wa Dae said that it had proposed a summit between Park and Abe.
“President Park and Prime Minister Abe are expected to discuss pending issues between the two countries, including comfort women,” Kim said.
However, they will not have a luncheon, Kim added.
During their meeting, the sex slavery issue is likely to top the agenda.
The issue has been the key impediment to improving strained bilateral ties.
Although the leaders have decided to meet, the two sides reportedly still remain apart over a solution to the long-running issue, raising speculation that the meeting may end without any progress being made.
In response to Korea’s calls for a formal apology and compensation, Japan insists all issues related to the wartime aggression were settled in the 1965 Korea-Japan Normalization Treaty.
Diplomatic experts say that the government needs to use the summit as its first approach to normalizing relations with Japan although it may fail to come up with solutions to the thorny issue.
“The outcomes of the summit may not be satisfactory because the comfort women issue may remain unsettled. However, we still need to make efforts to resolve pending issues in working-level meetings after the summit,” said Park Young-joon, a professor at the National Defense University.
“No summit between Korea and Japan under the Park administration has been a diplomatic vacuum. The bilateral meeting will contribute to the nation expanding the scope of its diplomatic activity to some extent.”
Experts also advise that given that the conditions to address the sex slavery issue do not seem to be ripe yet, the government should not excessively seek to show results, which could be counterproductive.
Along with the sex slavery issue, Park and Abe may discuss the scope of the Japanese Self Defense Forces’ military operations in the event of a war on the Korean Peninsula.
During last week’s Korea-Japan defense ministers’ talks, the two sides failed to reach an agreement on whether Japan would have to consult South Korea before launching any potential military action in North Korea.
The last Korea-Japan summit was held in 2012 between former President Lee Myung-bak and former Prime Minister Noda Yoshihiko on the sidelines of the trilateral talks in Beijing.