Japanese officials hope to hold the first ever talks between Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and South Korean President Park Geun-hye on the sidelines of the trilateral summit.
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President Xi told President Park that, “On behalf of the Chinese government, I would like to thank you for attending the celebration ceremony in honor of the 70th anniversary of the end of the Chinese People’s War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression”. It will be the first summit among the three countries in three years.
The United States welcomed the move.
Lastly, in Seoul, there are growing doubts about the US’ ability to remain the guarantor of South Korea’s security in the long run. The two sides came close to the brink of military conflict before North Korea reached out to the South to offer talks.
Last week top USA military figures looked over plans to defend South Korea against North Korean attacks, in preparation for the sudden start of conflict between the two neighbors.
Tensions persist on the divided peninsula over the North’s pursuit of its missile and nuclear weapons program.
For more than half a century since the signing of the 1953 armistice agreement, the capitalist-based, democratic South has had to cope with an endless series of armed provocations from the aggressive, totalitarian system of the North. But the end of the Cold War in 1991 brought increasingly closer relations between US-backed South Korea and China and Russian Federation allied with the north. Today, North Korea confronts dramatically new worldwide dynamics as it seeks to alter the status quo.
“Like water soaking through a sponge, singing songs that praise North Korea can slowly penetrate our minds and make us weak”, he said.
“We can presume from the decrease in reserves that the authorities have sold dollars in the market”, said Jeon Seung Ji, a currency analyst at Samsung Futures Inc.in Seoul.
South Korea’s Unification Ministry spokesman Jeong Joon-hee said it’s time for the two Koreas to faithfully try to implement their agreements rather than arguing over wording in them.
In short, for the Chinese, North Korea is not attractive – unlike South Korea, with its sophisticated culture, huge market and willingness to make deals with Beijing. Experts urge South Korea not to fall into the trap of “pendulum diplomacy” – the assumption that, since South Korea has showed off its friendship with China, it now needs to give the United States some kind of compensation.
South Korea’s gross domestic product rose in the second quarter at the slowest pace in two years and its exports dropped in August by the most since 2009, data showed this week.
Finally, the Chinese want a reforming and non-nuclear North Korea, and this is exactly the option Kim and his advisers see as completely unacceptable.
U.S. officials said they respect Park’s decision to go to Beijing, even as they deplore the anti-Japan overtones of the occasion.
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If a meeting between the leaders of Japan and South Korea is set, bureaucrats of the two governments will accelerate bilateral talks on these challenges. But, intriguingly, this time North Korea did not appear to demand new concessions, a staple of its old formula of threats in exchange for handouts.
