Superficial Cooperation

After the blank of three years, the trilateral agreement was not to continue the blank. The meeting among foreign ministers of Japan, China and South Korea in Seoul brought poor result. The joint statement of them promised their effort to have trilateral summit meeting without any time schedule. The most disturbing element among those three nations was interpretation of their history.

Last meeting of those three foreign ministers was in April, 2012. It was unusual for those three nations to have such a long blank. Joint statement said that they would work hard for holding the meeting by the Prime Minister or Presidents in any earliest and convenient time for them.

Japanese Foreign Minister, Fumio Kishida, insisted on the importance of foreseeing viewpoint. “It is important to reinforce our trilateral relationship through exchange and cooperation with future-oriented minds,” told Kishida at the beginning of the meeting.

But, “future-oriented” has been a convenient wording for Japan to ignore unilateral interpretation of history by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. China knows it well. Chinese Foreign Minister, Wang Yi, straightforwardly criticized Japan. “Relationship between China and Japan was deteriorated by history issue. History is not in paste tense, but present progressive,” told Wang in his post-meeting press conference. Host of the meeting and Foreign Minister of South Korea, Yun Byung-se also expressed his concern on the trilateral cooperation disturbed by history issue.

The concern was the basis of their bilateral meetings. Wang told Kishida that it was the seventieth anniversary from the World War II and important and sensitive year. “How Japan will face history is closely watched,” said Wang with an acknowledgement on Abe’s statement this summer. While they exchanged their recognition that the bilateral relationship has been improving after the summit meeting last November, there was no progress on the hottest issue between them, territorial dispute on Senkaku Islands.

Yun and Kishida agreed on reinforcing communication in foreign minister level. Kishida requested Yun’s visit to Japan and confirmed to arrange it in preferable timing. But, Yun did not avoid the most sensitive issue, comfort woman, and requested early solution on that issue. Kishida only replied that Abe would be succeeding the standpoint of his predecessors as a whole.

The promise of future meeting by their leaders did not guarantee stable relationship of those three leading nations in East Asia. Not only history, but territory, competition in economic hegemony, cooperation or credibility building in security would be included complicated problems. Instability of those three has not been removed.