South Korea, China and Japan are seeking to hold a meeting of their foreign ministers in Seoul late March in a bid to revive momentum for trilateral cooperation, officials said Friday.
The three countries have pushed to hold the ministerial talks to pave the way for the resumption of a high-level trilateral summit that has been on hold since mid-2012 amid rows over historical issues.
Seoul's foreign ministry said the three nations have settled on holding a foreign ministers' meeting around late March.
"The three nations are in consultations to set the timing of the meeting," said an official, asking not to be named.
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.
At the envisioned meeting, non-political issues such as maritime cooperation and cyberspace security are widely expected to be discussed, officials said.
A three-way foreign minister meeting has not been held since April 2012 mainly because 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.
Tensions over historical issues also linger between Japan and its two neighbors, driven by Tokyo's refusal to face up its wartime history, such as the sexual enslavement of Korean and other Asian women.
Japan ruled the Korean Peninsula as a colony from 1910-45. It also controlled much of China in the early part of the 20th century. A high-level trilateral summit has not been held since May 2012 amid long-standing historical grievances.
Since taking office in early 2013, President Park has shunned a bilateral summit with Abe, calling on Japan to first sincerely apologize over the sex slavery issue. (Yonhap)
