Leaders of South Korea, China and Japan to resume trilateral meeting to revive cooperation

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — Leaders of South Korea, China and Japan were set to meet Monday for their first trilateral meeting in more than four years as they seek to improve long-complicated relations that are key to regional peace.

No major breakthrough was expected during the gathering in Seoul. But experts said just restarting the countries’ highest-level annual meeting was a positive sign for cooperation among the three Northeast Asian neighbors.

On the eve of the meeting, South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol, Chinese Premier Li Qiang and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida had rounds of bilateral meetings among themselves to discuss how to boost economic and other cooperation.

But some thorny topics were also brought up, like North Korea, Taiwan and the South China Sea.

After meeting with Li, Kishida told reporters that he expressed serious concerns about the situations in the South China Sea, Hong Kong and China’s northwestern Xinjiang region. He said Japan was closely monitoring developments on self-governed Taiwan as well.

Kishida referred to China’s military assertiveness in the South China Sea, clampdowns on pro-democracy movements in Hong Kong and human rights abuses against minorities in Xinjiang. Last week, China also launched a large military exercise around Taiwan to show its anger over the inauguration of the island’s new president who refuses to accept its insistence that Taiwan is part of China.

When Yoon met with Li separately Sunday, he spoke about North Korea’s pursuit of nuclear weapons and its deepening military ties with Russia, and he asked China, as a permanent member of the U.N. Security Council, to contribute to promoting peace on the Korean Peninsula, according to Yoon’s office.

South Korea,