Senior diplomats from South Korea, China and Japan yesterday agreed that their nations’ leaders would meet at the “earliest convenient time,” the South Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs said after a rare meeting aimed at commencing trilateral exchanges.
The three nations had agreed to hold a summit every year starting in 2008 to foster regional cooperation, but that initiative has been frayed by bilateral feuds and the COVID-19 pandemic. The last summit was in 2019.
The ministry said in a statement that specific dates remained under discussion and that the nations’ foreign ministers would meet “in a couple of months.”
Photo: AFP
South Korea is this year’s host for three-way meetings and has proposed a summit in late December, Japanese broadcaster TBS reported.
Japanese Minister of Foreign Affairs Yoko Kamikawa said the three nations share the need to restart high-level talks, including summits, “as soon as possible.”
“I believe it is very valuable to discuss the various challenges the region faces,” she told a news conference in Tokyo.
The latest meeting was seen as partly intended to assuage Beijing’s concerns over the two US allies’ tightening cooperation after Seoul and Tokyo agreed this year to end legal, diplomatic and trade disputes over issues dating to Japan’s 1910 to 1945 occupation of Korea.
“We unanimously believe that carrying out cooperation is in the common interests of the three parties,” Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman Wang Wenbin (汪文斌) said yesterday. “We should work together to strengthen practical cooperation ... and make new contributions to regional peace, stability and prosperity.”
South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida have taken steps to mend ties and last month held a historic trilateral summit with US President Joe Biden, where the three vowed to boost cooperation, including on defense and economic security.
A senior South Korean official said China has been proactive in seeking trilateral cooperation and arranging meetings since bilateral ties soured over the deployment in 2017 of a US Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) anti-missile system in South Korea.
“I’m sure there should be some discomfort on their side regarding our increasingly close trilateral security partnerships with the United States and Japan,” the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the situation. “There seems to be a view there that they need to properly manage bilateral ties with us, as they saw how their THAAD responses backfired and fueled anti-China sentiment to serious levels.”
Beijing would most likely look to leverage trilateral trade ties to counterbalance the US friend-shoring strategy, promote people-to-people exchanges, and enhance communication and dialogue with Seoul and Tokyo on security and defense matters, said Zhao Tong (趙通), senior fellow at the US-based Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
Japan and South Korea have an interest in avoiding conflicts and maintaining a stable security relationship with China, he said.
“These shared interests open up new avenues for strategic communication, confidence-building and measures to prevent crises,” Zhao said.
Tropical Storm Usagi strengthened to a typhoon yesterday morning and remains on track to brush past southeastern Taiwan from tomorrow to Sunday, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. As of 2pm yesterday, the storm was approximately 950km east-southeast of Oluanpi (鵝鑾鼻), Taiwan proper’s southernmost point, the CWA said. It is expected to enter the Bashi Channel and then turn north, moving into waters southeast of Taiwan, it said. The agency said it could issue a sea warning in the early hours of today and a land warning in the afternoon. As of 2pm yesterday, the storm was moving at
UPDATED FORECAST: The warning covered areas of Pingtung County and Hengchun Peninsula, while a sea warning covering the southern Taiwan Strait was amended The Central Weather Administration (CWA) at 5:30pm yesterday issued a land warning for Typhoon Usagi as the storm approached Taiwan from the south after passing over the Philippines. As of 5pm, Usagi was 420km south-southeast of Oluanpi (鵝鑾鼻), Taiwan proper’s southernmost tip, with an average radius of 150km, the CWA said. The land warning covered areas of Pingtung County and the Hengchun Peninsula (恆春), and came with an amended sea warning, updating a warning issued yesterday morning to cover the southern part of the Taiwan Strait. No local governments had announced any class or office closures as of press time last night. The typhoon
DISCONTENT: The CCP finds positive content about the lives of the Chinese living in Taiwan threatening, as such video could upset people in China, an expert said Chinese spouses of Taiwanese who make videos about their lives in Taiwan have been facing online threats from people in China, a source said yesterday. Some young Chinese spouses of Taiwanese make videos about their lives in Taiwan, often speaking favorably about their living conditions in the nation compared with those in China, the source said. However, the videos have caught the attention of Chinese officials, causing the spouses to come under attack by Beijing’s cyberarmy, they said. “People have been messing with the YouTube channels of these Chinese spouses and have been harassing their family members back in China,”
The Central Weather Administration (CWA) yesterday said there are four weather systems in the western Pacific, with one likely to strengthen into a tropical storm and pose a threat to Taiwan. The nascent tropical storm would be named Usagi and would be the fourth storm in the western Pacific at the moment, along with Typhoon Yinxing and tropical storms Toraji and Manyi, the CWA said. It would be the first time that four tropical cyclones exist simultaneously in November, it added. Records from the meteorology agency showed that three tropical cyclones existed concurrently in January in 1968, 1991 and 1992.
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