By Kim Hyo-jin
Foreign ministers of South Korea, China and Japan will hold a meeting today to discuss preparations for a trilateral summit that is likely to be held this year, according to the foreign ministry, Tuesday.
South Korean Foreign Minister Yun Byung-se will meet with his Chinese and Japanese counterparts, Wang Yi and Fumio Kishida in Tokyo and talk about ways to improve trilateral cooperation and regional security, spokesman Cho June-hyuck said.
“The meeting would hopefully tighten trilateral cooperation and contribute to improving bilateral relations in Northeast Asia,” Cho said during a press briefing.
A joint statement won’t be adopted and instead ministers will hold a joint press conference after the meeting, he noted, citing it was because the meeting was arranged hastily without enough consultations.
The meeting comes as China and Japan are mired in a territorial row over islands in the East China Sea and as tensions grow between Korea and China over Seoul’s plan to deploy the U.S. Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) battery in the southeastern Korean Peninsula.
The rare gathering follows the trilateral summit held in Seoul in Nov. 2015.
The heads of states then agreed to meet in Tokyo this year but the preparations have reportedly been delayed due to China’s reluctance to join before its territorial dispute with Japan is resolved.
In this sense, the foreign ministers are expected to focus on discussing how to prepare a summit later this year.
The spokesman said Korea is in talks with Japan and China to decide whether to hold separate bilateral talks on the sidelines.
If foreign ministers of Korea and China meet separately, they are expected to discuss bilateral relations that were strained following Seoul’s plan on the deployment of a THAAD unit, pundits say.