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| Korean Foreign Minister Park Jin, center, Japanese Foreign Minister Yoshimasa Hayashi, left, and China's top diplomat Wang Yi attend a meeting with foreign ministers from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, as well as from the three Northeast Asian countries, in Jakarta, July 13. Yonhap |
Korea, China and Japan have been in discussions over holding a high-level meeting in the near future to arrange a trilateral summit within the year, according to sources Wednesday.
The three countries' diplomatic authorities have been discussing a plan to hold a senior officials' meeting next month in Korea, the current chair country of a tripartite consultative body, in order to resume their regular three-way summits within the year.
A Seoul foreign ministry official said on the condition of anonymity that Korea was "coordinating with relevant nations" to resume discussions among the three countries' consultative body "with a goal to hold a trilateral summit within the year."
The three sides were reportedly envisioning that the senior officials' meeting would be led by deputy foreign minister-level officials.
Japan's Mainichi Shimbun also reported that the three sides were discussing holding a senior-level meeting in Seoul in late September.
Three-way summits among the regional neighbors, first held in December 2008, were suspended after the eighth gathering in December 2019 following a dispute between Korea and Japan over forced labor compensation rulings and the pandemic.
Talks on the need to revive tripartite summit diplomacy have surfaced following a thawing of the frozen ties between Seoul and Japan since the launch of the current Korean administration under President Yoon Suk Yeol in May of last year. (Yonhap)
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