South Korean Foreign Minister Cho Tae-yul, second from left, attends a meeting with Japanese Foreign Minister Takeshi Iwaya after the 11th Japan-China-South Korea trilateral foreign ministers’ meeting in Tokyo on Saturday. Photo by Rodrigo Reyes Marin/Pool/EPA-EFE
March 22 (UPI) — Leaders from China, Japan and South Korea met on Saturday and agreed to cooperate in the future amid growing uncertainty over U.S trade and security policies.
Representatives of the three nations agreed to hold a summit in the near-future to discuss potential trilateral trade, Japanese Foreign Minister Takeshi Iwaya told media.
“It is extremely important for the three countries … to promote future-oriented exchanges and cooperation and guide the region and international community from division to cooperation,” Iwaya said.
“It is more important than ever that we make efforts to overcome division and conflict through dialogue and cooperation,” Iwaya added.
Iwaya, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi and South Korean Foreign Minister Cho Tae-yul participated in the trilateral talks in Tokyo, which are aimed at improving regional relations among the three nations.
“It is necessary for China, Japan and South Korea to further strengthen communication, enhance mutual trust, deepen cooperation and provide more stabilizing factors for regional peace and development,” Yi told the South China Morning Post.
Yi said the “international situation” is chaotic and changing, partly due to U.S. President Donald Trump‘s Indo-Pacific policies.
Trump’s willingness to apply tariffs to support the U.S. economy has caused many international trade partners to re-assess their positions.
Saturday’s trilateral talk was the first meeting involving Japanese and Chinese officials since April 2019 and could lead to China agreeing to import Japanese fishery products, Nippon reported.
China banned importation of Japanese fishery products following the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant’s meltdown on March 11, 2011, after an earthquake damaged the now-closed facility that is located in Okuma, Fukushima, in northeastern Japan.
Chinese, Japanese and South Korean officials agreed to resume prior free-trade negotiations that were halted in 2019.
South Korean and Japanese officials will have to work out differences related to Japan’s use of forced labor of South Koreans during World War II.
Those differences led to a diplomatic row last year after South Korean officials accused Japanese leaders of not properly honoring South Korean victims who were forced to work in Japan’s Sado mines.
“The ministers agreed on the need to continue this flow of exchanges and steadily advance bilateral relations without disruption,” Cho said in a news release.
“They emphasized the importance of candid communication between their diplomatic authorities to ensure the stable management of bilateral issues,” he added.
Political differences between South Korea and North Korea also would need to be addressed.
Yi said such talks would require addressing the political situation in the Korean Peninsula.
“All parties should face up to the root causes of the peninsula issue, meet each other halfway, show goodwill to each other, strive to form positive interactions and seek the greatest common ground for their respective concerns,” Yi said.