Senior diplomats from S. Korea, Japan, China agree to boost collaboration

Ranking diplomats from South Korea, Japan and China on Thursday agreed to ramp up their trilateral collaboration in a meeting held amid frayed ties over historical and territorial issues with Tokyo.

The meeting brought together Seoul's Deputy Minister for Political Affairs Lee Kyung-soo, China's Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs Liu Zhenmin and Asia Bureau Director General Shinsuke Sugiyama from Japan's foreign ministry.

"In the latest meeting, the three countries reaffirmed the importance of the three-nation dialogue in promoting peace, stability and co-prosperity in the Northeast Asian region," Seoul's foreign ministry said after the meeting. "The three countries agreed to maintain and strengthen the momentum of trilateral cooperation further in the future."

The eighth meeting of the three countries' ranking foreign ministry officials comes amid Japan's unusually chilly relations with China and South Korea.

Japan's recent renewed territorial claims to Dokdo, South Korean islets in the sea between the two countries, have quickly chilled the two nations' relations.

Furthermore, Seoul's repeated calls on Tokyo to apologize and compensate for its sexual enslavement during World War II have also gone unanswered, further cooling bilateral ties.

Meanwhile, tension between Japan and China has also been running high amid heightened territorial disputes over another set of islets. The islets in the East China Sea are called Diaoyu in China and Senkaku in Japan.

On the agenda discussed in the Thursday meeting were ways to push for cooperative projects among the three countries as well as the possibility of holding meetings of their state leaders and foreign ministers, according to the Seoul foreign ministry.

Since 2007, the three Northeast Asian nations have held such meetings annually in order to facilitate peace and stability in the region where military and political rivalry runs deep.

But recent tensions have kept the neighbors from holding such gatherings, with the last of foreign minister-level meeting and summit being held in April and May last year, respectively.

Seoul, as a rotating host of a three-nation body, had attempted to arrange a trilateral summit in May, but plans fell apart as territorial tension escalated between Beijing and Tokyo.

The officials will strive to keep their cooperative momentum afloat in the meeting, steering clear of raising political tension, a Seoul official said.

Still, the possibility of hosting a three-nation summit within the year is very low, the official added.

"Under these circumstances, the prospect of holding the summit is very difficult to determine, but we will continue to make efforts to arrange one until the end of our chairmanship at the end of this year," he said.

"Trilateral cooperation continued to move ahead, but the progress has been slow due to some difficulties and challenges,"

China's vice minister said in the opening remarks made open to the media. "Joint efforts are really needed to improve and enhance cooperation among the three."

(Yonhap News)