adminThe foreign ministers of China, Japan and South Korea are meeting for their first talks in three years.
The meeting in Seoul is likely to focus on ways to ease regional tensions over territorial and diplomatic disputes.
The three states have strong economic ties but relations still suffer from unresolved issues dating back to Japan’s actions in World War II.
A Chinese foreign ministry spokesman said he hoped the ministers would be able to “look forward into the future”.
South Korea’s Yun Byung-se welcomed Japan’s Fumio Kishida and China’s Wang Yi to South Korea’s capital on Saturday.
Foreign ministers from the three countries last met in April 2012, for their sixth annual trilateral meeting.
It was cancelled the following year after Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe angered China and South Korea by visiting a shrine that honours Japan’s war dead, including a number of senior war criminals.
Both countries have accused Tokyo of failing to adequately atone for aggression in World War II, including its wartime use of sex slaves, known euphemistically as “comfort women”.
They also accuse Japan of whitewashing wartime atrocities in schoolbooks.
Mr Kishida met his South Korean counterpart ahead of the trilateral meeting, and said that “despite difficult issues between the two countries”, the two sides would “continue communicating at various levels in order to strengthen our co-operation”. – Agencies
Bongani Ndlovu
Online Reporter