China-Japan-South Korea summit fails to cover key security issues despite having ‘right optics’

In the joint declaration issued after the Monday summit, the three countries called for wide-ranging cooperation, including resuming negotiations on a free-trade agreement as well as expanding people-to-people exchanges.

Andrew Yeo, a senior fellow and the SK-Korea Foundation chair of Korea studies at the Brookings Institution’s Centre for Asia Policy Studies, said the joint statement expressed the desire to “institutionalise”, or to hold the event on a regular basis.

“Those lower level ties are still important even if larger diplomatic relations are broken”, Yeo said, noting that the summit provided an opportunity for the three leaders to hold dialogues both in a bilateral and trilateral format.

“The trilateral summit traditionally covered soft, non-political issues so there was never high expectations that thornier issues related to security, or conflict would make it to the agenda,” Yeo said.

Responding to calls on it to denuclearise, Pyongyang said on Monday such a goal has “already died out theoretically, practically, and physically”, calling it a “grave political provocation” that would speed up a military confrontation.

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Trade and Taiwan discussed at 3-way summit for Chinese, Japanese and South Korean leaders

Stephen Nagy, a professor of politics and international studies at the International Christian University in Tokyo, said given the intensification of the US-China strategic competition, the summit “superficially had the right optics”.

“Any meeting is better than no meeting,” Nagy said, adding that the summit’s primary goal was to return to some level of dialogue between the participants, with Beijing hoping to encourage Japan and South Korea to distance themselves from the US.

“Japan and South Korea are engaging