The foreign ministry invited North Korea but, as of Monday, had yet to receive a response.
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The ministry will also sponsor a separate forum hosted by the Sejong Institute, a private think tank near Seoul, from Tuesday through Thursday.
South Korean President Park Geun-hye’s office said she would meet Li on October 31 in Seoul.
The neighbours have been moving to improve ties, holding a foreign ministers’ meeting in March and trying to restore what had been a regular forum at the summit level to discuss cooperation.
“After three years of suspension, the Chinese side hopes that the three parties can take this meeting as an opportunity to reflect upon and summarize the past; find direction for future cooperation; enhance our cooperation in traditional fields like trade, culture and sustainable development; and expand cooperation in new, emerging sectors like creative economy and information technology”, Hua said. Any improvement in Japanese-South Korean ties would be welcomed by the USA, whose efforts to balance China’s growing assertiveness in the region and deter North Korea have been hampered by disagreements between its two main East Asian allies.
It then said that senior party, military and government officials visited the tower commemorating the North Korea-China friendship and laid flowers there to mark the anniversary.
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has met Chinese President Xi Jinping twice since November 2014.
The China-Japan-ROK trilateral summit meeting has been an annual event from 2008 to 2012.
Japanese news agency Jiji quoted observers who said South Korea has been blocking progress in the trilateral talks because it wants to have a competitive edge over Japan in the Chinese market by capitalizing on its bilateral FTA with China, which is expected to go into force by the end of the year.
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The bilateral summit, if held, would be the first time that Park will meet with Abe one-on-one since taking office in early 2013.
