Prime Minister Shinzo Abe had chats with Chinese President Xi Jinping and South Korean President Moon Jae-in on the sidelines of the annual Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) regional summit in Papua New Guinea on Saturday, a Japanese official said, though details of the brief exchanges are not known.
The encounters took place when the three East Asian leaders were waiting for an event involving leaders of the APEC forum and corporate executives, Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretary Kotaro Nogami told reporters.
Abe shook hands with Xi, but not with Moon, according to Nogami.
Abe met with Xi less than a month ago during an official visit to China in late October, the first Japanese leader to do so in nearly seven years in a sign of improving bilateral ties.
But Japan-South Korean ties have rapidly deteriorated since late last month when Seoul's top court ordered a Japanese company to pay compensation for forced labor during World War II. The Japanese government maintains the issue of compensation was settled under a 1965 bilateral accord.
The South Korean presidential office said Abe expressed his sympathy for a senior South Korean diplomat who collapsed from a brain hemorrhage on Friday while accompanying Moon to the East Asia summit in Singapore.
Abe also held talks with Papua New Guinean Prime Minister Peter O'Neill, who chairs the two-day APEC summit, the Foreign Ministry in Tokyo said.
Abe called for Papua New Guinea's continued cooperation to recover remains of Japanese who died in the South Pacific nation during World War II.
During the war, around 127,000 Japanese died in Papua New Guinea, but the remains of 76,000 have not been recovered.