Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida plans to accompany Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to a summit in South Korea with Chinese Premier Li Keqiang and South Korean President Park Geun-hye in late October or early November, Foreign Ministry officials said Wednesday.
Summit talks among those three East Asian leaders will be held for the first time since May 2012.
Kishida is thinking of holding separate talks with his Chinese and South Korean counterparts, Wang Yi and Yun Byung-se, respectively, as Wang also plans to be in South Korea, where the trilateral summit is to be held, the officials said.
While there, Abe is also making arrangements to hold his first formal meeting with Park. The two leaders have not met for formal talks since Abe took office in 2012 and Park in 2013, due to a chill in bilateral relations over differences regarding territory and wartime history issues.