China, South Korea and Japan to a trilateral summit not seen since 2019

Highlights: China, South Korea and Japan have agreed to hold a trilateral meeting. The meeting would be the first since the end of the Second World War. The three countries have been at odds for decades over the North Korean peninsula. China is the largest economy in the world, followed by the U.S. and then South Korea. The United States is the world's second largest economy, after the United Kingdom, with a population of more than 100 million people. It is estimated that the United States has more than 1 billion people living in its borders.

Beijing, Seoul and Tokyo agreed on Tuesday to hold a summit of the leaders of the three countries "as soon as possible" to ease China's concerns over deepening ties.

China said on Tuesday (September 26th), after a rare trilateral diplomatic meeting in Seoul, that it had agreed with South Korea and Japan to hold a summit of the leaders of the three countries "as soon as possible".

The talks in the South Korean capital, attended by deputy and assistant ministers, were seen as a way to ease Beijing's concerns about deepening security ties between Tokyo, Seoul and Washington.

China welcomed "in-depth discussions on promoting a stable restart of trilateral cooperation."

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"It was agreed that cooperation between China, Japan and South Korea is in the common interest of all three sides," Wang Wenbin, a spokesman for Chinese diplomacy, said at a regular press briefing on Tuesday.

The three countries agreed to hold a meeting of their foreign ministers "in the coming months" and "to encourage the holding of a leaders' meeting as soon as possible," he said.

The last such summit was held in 2019 in Chengdu, western China. No other summits have been held since, due in part to diplomatic and historical differences between Seoul and Tokyo, linked in part to Japan's colonization of the Korean peninsula from 1910 to 1945.

"20% of the world's population and 25% of the world's GDP"

South Korea's Foreign Ministry also said Tuesday that diplomats from the three countries had "agreed to hold the trilateral summit as soon as possible and host a trilateral ministerial meeting in preparation."

Cooperation between South Korea, China and Japan "plays an important role not only in Northeast Asia, but also for world peace, stability and prosperity," South Korean Foreign Minister Park Jin said in a statement ahead of the meeting.

He also pointed out that the three countries alone accounted for "20% of the world's population and 25% of the world's GDP".

Facing North Korea, South Korea, led by President Yoon Suk-yeol, a conservative who advocates toughness on Pyongyang, has stepped up military cooperation with Washington. At the same time, it has moved closer to Japan, another close ally of the United States.

In August, at a summit at Camp David near Washington bringing together Japanese and South Korean leaders alongside US President Joe Biden, Yoon Suk-yeol said the meeting opened a "new chapter" in relations between the three countries.

Beijing had slammed a statement issued during the meeting, in which the three allies criticized China's "aggressive behavior" in the South China Sea. Seoul's largest trading partner, Beijing is also North Korea's main diplomatic backer.

Tokyo, Seoul and Washington regularly hold joint military exercises, provoking the ire of Pyongyang. China sent senior politicians to the North Korean capital in early September to attend a military parade.

With AFP

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China, South Korea and Japan to a trilateral summit not seen since 2019

"20% of the world's population and 25% of the world's GDP"

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