South Korea and Japan discuss South China Sea as trilateral summit with China draws to close
As Premier Li Keqiang was calling for greater cooperation between young Chinese and Korean entrepreneurs on the final day of his trilateral summit to South Korea the leaders of the host nation and Japan held “constructive” talks about the South China Sea.
Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe raised the South China Sea issue with President Park Geun-hye during a meeting in Seoul on Monday – the first official bilateral summit between the two for more than three years, said Yasuhisa Kawamura, press secretary of Japan’s foreign affairs ministry.
“The discussion was constructive on the South China Sea [issue],” said Kawamura, without giving details about what was said by the two leaders.
“Japan’s basic stance on this issue is that …Japan would like to cooperate with the US and South Korea .. in order to preserve an open, liberal, and peaceful ocean,” Kawamura said.
Kawamura added that Japan supported the US Navy’s sail-by in the disputed waters last week because the move was “in accordance with international law” and the current condition of the South China Sea was a common concern of the international society.
His remarks came as Admiral Harry Harris, the commander of US forces in the Pacific, was due to meet Chinese defence officials in Beijing this week during an official visit.
Harris is one of the senior officers in charge of the warship USS Lassen, which sparked a rebuke from Beijing after sailing within 12-nautical-miles (22km) of two artificial islands, Mischief and Subi reefs, built by China in the disputed Spratly Islands on October 27.
Abe and Park met for one hour and 45 minutes in the Blue House, which included a meeting involving a limited number of high-ranking officials, plus a second larger session, said Kawamura.
The South China Sea issue had been raised during the second session, he added.
A “substantial proportion” of the talks focused on the matter of so called “comfort women” – including Koreans who were forced to work in wartime military brothels for the Imperial Japanese Army – Kawamura said.
Such women are euphemistically known as “comfort women” in Japan.
Bilateral ties between the nations have soured because the two governments have failed to reconcile their differences over their wartime history, with the Japanese government failing to meet Korean comfort women’s demands for compensation and an apology.
Abe accepted that the issue of comfort women had frayed the bilateral relations.
Both leaders agreed to speed up director-general-level discussions on the matter with the aim of reaching a conclusion “at an early date”, said the official.
They also held “extensive” talks on the denuclearisation issue and stressed “solidarity” between Japan, South Korea, and the US in pushing for a nuclear-free North Korea, he said.
Meanwhile, South Korean defence chief Han Min-Koo told Ash Carter, his US counterpart, during a security consultative meeting in Seoul [on Monday morning] that freedom of navigation and flight should be guaranteed in the South China Sea, Korean news agency Yonhap reported.
South Korea has been wary to avoid taking sides in the China-US dispute, saying only that all parties involved should be restrained from actions that could increase tensions.
