The meeting last Wednesday between Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Chinese Premier Li Keqiang and South Korean President Moon Jae-in in Tokyo was the first trilateral summit of the three Northeast Asian powers in 2½ years. It was also the first visit to Japan by a South Korean president in more than six years and the first by a top Chinese leader in about seven years. The three countries took turns hosting the trilateral summit every year between 2008 and 2012, but the meeting has since been held only sporadically as wartime history-related issues and territorial rows marred relations between Japan and the other two countries.
The scarcity of top-level exchanges speaks volumes about the state of Japan's diplomatic ties with its regional neighbors. During the talks, Abe, Li and Moon agreed to coordinate their efforts toward the denuclearization of North Korea, cooperate in infrastructure building in Asia and accelerate talks for a trilateral free trade agreement. The issuance of a joint declaration by the three leaders, however, was delayed late into the night due to differences over the wording of its text concerning the North Korean and history-related issues.
The meeting exposed the gap between Japan, which calls for achieving North Korea's denuclearization over the short term by maintaining pressure and sanctions on Pyongyang, and China and South Korea, which favor a more gradual process through dialogue with the North. The call that Abe made in the talks for scrapping all of North Korea's weapons of mass destruction and ballistic missile programs in a "complete, verifiable and irreversible" manner did not make it in the joint declaration.