South Korea, China and Japan will hold a foreign ministers meeting this weekend for the first time in about three years, in a bid to restore stagnant trilateral cooperation, Seoul's foreign ministry said Tuesday.
The meeting scheduled for Saturday in Seoul will bring together South Korean Foreign Minister Yun Byung-se and his Chinese and Japanese counterparts Wang Yi and Fumio Kishida, the ministry said.
"The meeting will pave the way for restoring three-way cooperation," Seoul's foreign ministry said in a statement.
A trilateral meeting of foreign ministers has not been held since April 2012 as South Korea's and China's bilateral relations with Japan remain strained due to historical and territorial rows.
The three top diplomats are expected to assess the current status of trilateral cooperation and discuss the future direction for further development, Seoul's foreign ministry added.
The foreign ministers are expected to discuss a trilateral summit that has been also not held since May 2012 amid long-standing historical grievances, according to government officials.
In Beijing, China's foreign ministry spokesman Hong Lei said the foreign ministers "will review the progress made during their trilateral cooperation and exchange views on the principles that should be upheld in the future direction of the trilateral cooperation."
Asked whether China will raise the issue of its territorial dispute with Japan during the three-way meeting in Seoul, Hong sidestepped the question, saying Beijing will release the relevant information later.
However, Hong said China and Japan have been in preparations for bilateral talks between their foreign ministers on the sidelines of the Seoul meeting.
Asked whether Wang and Kishida will hold a bilateral meeting in Seoul, Hong replied, "China and Japan are in communication for the relevant arrangements."
Last week, the three nations held a meeting of senior diplomats in Seoul as a preparatory step toward holding the meeting with their foreign ministers.
The foreign ministers' meeting will "undoubtedly" give the three nations the chance to "inject momentum" into trilateral cooperation and revitalizing various consultative mechanisms and projects, South Korea's deputy foreign minister Lee Kyung-soo said on March 11.
Seoul has slammed Japan for refusing to face up to its wartime atrocities, such as its sexual enslavement of Korean and other Asian women during World War II.
China and Japan have been sparring over a territorial dispute involving islands in the East China Sea, called Senkaku in Japan and Diaoyu in China.
During a regional summit in Myanmar in November, South Korean President Park Geun-hye expressed her hope to meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe at a trilateral summit following an envisioned meeting of their foreign ministers in the near future.
Since taking office in early 2013, Park has shunned a bilateral summit with Abe, calling on Japan to first sincerely apologize for the sex slavery issue. (Yonhap)
