WORLD
Leaders of South Korea, China and Japan will meet Monday for their first trilateral talks since 2019
Baku, May 23, AZERTAC
Leaders of South Korea, China and Japan will meet next week in Seoul for their first trilateral talks in more than four years to discuss how to revive their cooperation, South Korea’s presidential office said Thursday, according to the Associated Press.
Since their inaugural stand-alone trilateral summit in 2008, the three countries were supposed to hold such a meeting among their leaders every year. But the summit has been suspended because of the COVID-19 pandemic and often-complicated ties among the Asian neighbors since the last one in December 2019 in China.
The trilateral meeting among South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol, Chinese Premier Li Qiang and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida will take place in Seoul on Monday, Kim Tae-hyo, Seoul’s deputy national security director, told a news conference.
Chinese President Xi Jinping will not be attending.
Li and Kishida were scheduled to arrive in South Korea on Sunday. They were to meet Yoon bilaterally on Sunday afternoon before attending a welcoming dinner banquet with the South Korean president, Kim said.
“This summit will be a turning point for Korea, Japan and China to completely restore and normalize three-way cooperation systems,” Kim said.