Keeping Momentum

Two men showed smile as they had been forced and between them was the host lady with her teeth exposed. Trilateral summit meeting of Japan, China and Republic of Korea was held for the first time these three and a half years in Seoul on Sunday. They failed in settling a number of problems among them. So, what was the reason of their smiles? It was because they thought it was successful in terms of maintaining momentum of the trilateral diplomatic channel.

The meeting was held in the Presidential Residence, Blue House, in Seoul for one and a half hour. In the beginning of the meeting, three leaders made oral jabs each other in front of TV camera. “In spite of closeness of the nations, deep understanding is not established between some of them,” told Chinese Prime Minister Li Keqiang. The host of the meeting also frustrated with the situation of the trilateral relationship. “We have not been able to settle the problems that brought conflict and opposition in politics and security,” said South Korean President Park Geun-hye. As long as reading the reports in Japan, it was not clear what Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said.

According to the reports based on announcement of Japanese government officials, Abe explained that his statement on the seventieth anniversary from World War II was a promise of further contribution to international peace and prosperity based on seventy-year history of a peaceful nation. “It is not productive to focus on specific past events,” Abe said to have told, “and I want to weave a forward-looking history of cooperation by Japan, China and South Korea.”

Having exhibited strong position in the trilateral relationship for taming each of their internal frustrations, three leaders shared the necessity for improving economic relationship that they deadly wanted. They reconfirmed their willingness to accelerate negotiation for the trilateral free trade agreement and to make effort for economic integration in East Asia. Economy is currently the most crucial issue for each of them.

Three leaders intensively avoided crucial issues that had caused deterioration of their relationship: comfort woman and South China Sea. Leaving them behind, the joint declaration included “spirit of facing history and stepping forward to the future,” which interpretation might be different by the three. The greatest achievement was that they agreed to have annual trilateral summit meeting, expecting Japan to chair next meeting in 2016. Li and Park supposedly wanted to say that Abe would be responsible, if next meeting was cancelled.

The declaration also opposed any action drawing tension by North Korea on nuclear issue. On climate change, they reconfirmed their cooperation for making a deal in the Paris conference next month. All those agreements will be meaningless, if the trilateral framework is collapsed.