Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, left, speaks at a joint press conference after meeting with South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol (center) and Chinese Premier Li Qiang in Seoul on Monday.
18:15 JST, May 27, 2024
SEOUL – The leaders of Japan, China and South Korea held talks and issued a joint statement Monday saying stability on the Korean Peninsula is in their common interest.
Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, Chinese Premier Li Qiang and South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol attended the trilateral talks in Seoul on Monday morning. The last summit with the three countries took place in Chengdu, China, in December 2019.
The joint statement released after the meeting said: “Maintaining peace, stability and prosperity on the Korean Peninsula and in Northeast Asia serves our common interest and is our common responsibility.”
Early Monday, North Korea said it would launch a satellite, and at the start of the meeting Kishida criticized the move. He then added: “I want to strengthen communication [among the three nations] on international affairs, including the situation in North Korea, and on strengthening the international economic order.”
“If North Korea continues with the launch despite warnings from the international community, the international community must respond decisively to this move,” said Yoon, who chaired the talks on Monday.
“The purpose of China-Japan-South Korea cooperation is to promote development to strengthen the East Asian partnership and safeguard regional and global peace and prosperity,” Li said.
Regarding North Korea, which continues to develop its nuclear and missile programs, the joint statement said only: “We reiterated positions on regional peace and stability, denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula and the kidnapping issue, respectively.”
The statement also refers to the importance of “an international order based on the rule of law and international law.”
There are six areas in which the three countries can cooperate: people-to-people exchanges; sustainable development, including through response to climate change; economic cooperation and trade; public health and aging societies; science, technology and digital transformation; and disaster response and security.
The leaders agreed to declare 2025-2026 as “the Year of Cultural Exchange among the three countries.”
“We will promote exchanges between future generations and strive to achieve people-to-people exchanges involving 40 million people per year by 2030,” Yoon said at a joint press conference after the meeting.
The statement also said the three countries will continue to work towards achieving a trilateral free trade agreement, hold regular trilateral meetings and promote cooperation.
“We must exercise and share our wisdom to expand cooperation in ways that benefit the regional and international communities, and also to guide the international community toward cooperation rather than division and confrontation,” Kishida said during the meeting.
The Japan-China-South Korea summits began in 1999 on the sidelines of Association of Southeast Asian Nations summit talks. Since 2008, these have been held separately from other international meetings. Japan will chair the next trilateral talks.
