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Foreign Minister Yoko Kamikawa of Japan, Foreign Minister Park Jin of South Korea, and Foreign Minister Wang Yi of China enter their trilateral meeting held in Busan’s APEC House on Nov. 26. (Yonhap)

The foreign ministers of South Korea, Japan and China met in Busan on Sunday, the first meeting of its kind in four years and three months. Yet the diplomats failed to set a date for a trilateral summit, raising doubts as to whether it will happen before the year is up.

Following the meeting, South Korean Foreign Minister Park Jin announced that the three ministers “agreed to work to restore and normalize cooperation” among their respective countries.

When questioned about a trilateral summit, however, Park was evasive.

“We will accelerate the necessary preparations, and will work to make a summit reality in the near future,” he said.

“Although the doors to a summit aren’t closed, the odds of it happening by the end of the year look slim,” said Cho Tae-yong, the director of Seoul’s National Security Office, during an appearance on Yonhap News TV shortly before the three foreign ministers convened their meeting.

Directly after the meeting, an official from South Korea’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs told reporters, “Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi strongly communicated his support for restoring and normalizing relations and holding a trilateral summit.” Adding, “It is true, however, that we couldn’t set an official date during this meeting, as there are several factors to consider.”

As the meeting’s host, the South Korean government hoped to decide on a date for a trilateral summit. Yet it appears that a passive attitude from the Chinese side prevented an official date from being set. South Korea’s diplomatic favoritism of the US, Japan’s release of radioactive water into the Pacific, the question of banning Japanese seafood imports, and other unresolved issues likely contributed to China’s aloofness. The South Korean government scheduled a press conference and a banquet following the foreign ministers’ meeting, but these events were reportedly canceled due to schedule conflicts on Wang’s part.

Ahead of the trilateral meeting, Park held respective bilateral meetings with the foreign ministers of Japan and China. Park first met with Japanese Foreign Minister Yoko Kamikawa, who strongly protested a Korean high court’s ruling on Thursday that ordered Japan to compensate 16 victims of the “comfort women” system of sexual slavery. Kamikawa rejected the ruling as a “breach of international law.”

In Park’s meeting with Wang, the Chinese foreign minister took issue with South Korea’s declaration of suspending part of the Sept. 19 inter-Korean military agreement signed in 2018.

The Japanese Foreign Ministry issued a statement following the trilateral meeting, stating that Minister Kamikawa regards the Seoul High Court’s rejection of the principle of sovereign immunity as stated in international law as “extremely regrettable.”

“She again urged the ROK to take appropriate measures to remedy the breaches of international law,” the statement added, using ROK to refer to South Korea.

In the aforementioned ruling, the Seoul High Court ruled in favor of 16 victims, including 95-year-old Lee Yong-soo and the late Kwak Ye-nam and Kim Bok-dong. The decision reversed a ruling made by a lower court, and ordered the Japanese government to compensate comfort women victims in full.

When reporters questioned a Foreign Ministry staffer about what Park said regarding the court ruling, the official replied, “The minister expressed his respect for the official agreement reached by South Korea and Japan regarding comfort women in 2015.” The ministry, however, did not include this statement in its press release.

According to a 2015 South Korea-Japan agreement negotiated by the Park Geun-hye administration, Japan paid 1 billion yen (US$6.7 million) on Dec. 25, 2015, into a foundation established to compensate former comfort women. The governments of both countries referred to the agreement as a “final and irreversible resolution” to the issue.

Park and Wang encountered disagreement on inter-Korean issues during their meeting. According to the aforementioned Foreign Ministry official, Park defended South Korea’s suspension of the Sept. 19 inter-Korean military pact as a “minimal defensive measure for protecting the citizens of the Republic of Korea,”

“Minister Park emphasized that North Korea continued its provocations without any regard for the Sept. 19 military agreement, and is trying to relay blame for its actions onto South Korea,” the official added.

Wang reportedly stuck to China’s default position, calling on both parties to "remain calm and focus on the bigger picture of a political resolution.”

By Shin Hyeong-cheol, staff reporter; Choi Hyun-june, Beijing correspondent

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