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| 2023-11-26 16:33:12
(LEAD) S Korea-China-Japan-FM talks
(LEAD) FM Park expresses hope to resume stalled trilateral summit with China, Japan
(ATTN: UPDATES with top diplomats' remarks at start of talks; CHANGES photos)
By Kim Seung-yeon and Yi Wonju
BUSAN, Nov. 26 (Yonhap) -- Foreign Minister Park Jin expressed hope Sunday that South Korea, China and Japan will resume the long-stalled summit among the leaders of the three countries at an early date, as part of efforts to reinvigorate the three-way cooperation.
Park made the remarks during the talks with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi and Japanese Foreign Minister Yoko Kamikawa, the first such meeting to take place after a four-year hiatus as the three neighboring countries seek to revive tripartite cooperation.
"It is important to further institutionalize trilateral cooperation so that it can develop into a stable and sustainable system," Park said at the start of the talks in Busan.
"I look forward to working together to ensure that the trilateral summit of Korea, Japan and China, which is at the pinnacle of the three-way cooperation, will be able to take place at an early date," Park said.
Wang pointed out that the three-way cooperation "has never been stopped" even during the global spread of the COVID-19 pandemic, saying there is "huge potential, strong demand and a wide range of resources."
"China, Korea and Japan must play a positive role in regional and global development with a more honest attitude," Wang said.
Kamikawa said the trilateral cooperation has become increasingly important as it "greatly contributes to peace and prosperity" even at a time of many unprecedented challenges, such as climate change and artificial intelligence.
"Whether we can provide resilience with the power to overcome these challenges depends on how we can collaborate with ideas that are not tied to existing methods," she said.
"I would like to return to this starting point and make today's talks an opportunity to restart cooperation between the three countries," she added.
Ahead of the trilateral talks, Park had separate bilateral talks with Kamikawa and Wang.
Wang and Kamikawa arrived in Busan on Saturday.
Park also hosted a luncheon meeting for his two counterparts.
The trilateral summit has not been held since the last one took place in China's southwestern city of Chengdu in December 2019.
The summit has been suspended due to the COVID-19 pandemic outbreak and a deterioration in Seoul-Tokyo relations over the issue of compensating Korean victims of forced labor during Japan's 1910-45 colonial rule of the Korean Peninsula.
Talks of reviving the summit gathered momentum amid a dramatic warming of the Seoul-Tokyo relations after South Korea said in March it will compensate the Korean victims on its own without asking for contributions from Japanese companies.
In a senior officials' meeting in late September, the three countries agreed to hold the tripartite summit at "the earliest convenient time."
The ministers were likely to discuss the rising tensions on the Korean Peninsula after North Korea's launch of a military reconnaissance satellite earlier this week, amid concerns over the growing military cooperation between Pyongyang and Moscow.
They were also likely to discuss efforts to promote three-way cooperation in forward-looking areas, such as sustainability and climate change, science and digital technologies, health and aging society, and people-to-people exchanges.
It marks the first visit by Kamikawa since she took office in September. Wang last visited South Korea in September 2021.
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