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South Korean officials are hopeful that the first independent three-way summit, slated for Saturday, would "open a new era" of neighborly solidarity, emerging from decades of hostility, a legacy of colonialism and Cold War rivalry.
President Lee Myung-bak is set to leave for the Japanese city of Fukuoka to meet Japanese Prime Minister Taro Aso and Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao, which would be the first three-nation summit to be held separately rather than part of a larger international meeting.
Lee's office said the gathering would be focused on discussing concerted efforts to shield the three nations’ export-driven economies from fallout from the global financial turmoil, and ways to resolve North Korea's nuclear weapons issue.
At the end of the summit, the leaders would adopt a joint statement on closer trilateral cooperation in overcoming the global financial crisis and disarming North Korea of nuclear weapons, the office said.
On the eve of the summit, South Korea signed new currency swap deals with Japan and China, which will help ease Seoul's foreign currency liquidity crunch and stabilize its financial markets. The central Bank of Korea announced on Friday that the agreement will raise an existing arrangement with Japan to the equivalent of US$30 billion, including a US$20-billion won-yen swap facility.
The bank also concluded a swap agreement with the People's Bank of China to have access to the equivalent of US$30 billion, including a US$20-billion won-yuan arrangement.
"The deals will mitigate adverse influences of the global financial turmoil and improve liquidity conditions," the BOK said in a statement.
South Korea's foreign reserves fell for an eighth month to the lowest level in four years in November to US$200.5 billion. The foreign exchange authorities injected foreign currency liquidity to ease uncertainty in the local foreign currency market in the wake of the persistent global credit crunch.
"It is very important for the three countries to tighten financial cooperation as they together hold almost half of the world's total foreign currency reserves," a Finance Ministry official said. He said Saturday's three-way summit would lead to greater economic cooperation to cushion the regional economy from the global economic downturn.
"The Fukuoka summit is significant historically," Foreign Minister Yu Myung-Hwan said. "South Korea, Japan and China have never held an independent three-way summit, largely due to history disputes," he said.
Ties between South Korea and Japan have been at their lowest ebb since Tokyo renewed its territorial claim to disputed islets and published history textbooks that critics say whitewash its wartime atrocities.
South Korea, which was victimized by Japan's war of aggression in the early part of last century, considers the Japanese moves as a bid to revive its militarism. Aged women who were forced to serve as sex slaves for the Japanese imperial army during World War II have protested every Wednesday since 1992 in front of the Japanese Embassy in central Seoul.
South Korea also has history and territorial disputes with China. Seoul is suspicious of a Chinese academic project to reexamine ancient history in the border area with the Korean peninsula to boost its historical claims. A border mountain has been at the center of a diplomatic dispute between Seoul and Beijing since China took a series of steps to bolster its sovereignty over it.
For its part, China is concerned about President Lee's pursuit of stronger military ties with the United States. Earlier this year, China’s Foreign Ministry called the South Korea-U.S. military alliance "a leftover of the Cold War," saying the alliance "cannot resolve security issues of the contemporary world."
Beijing and Tokyo are also in territory and history disputes over Tokyo's handling of the legacy of its colonial occupation, which has long been a source of conflict in the region.
"But the Fukuoka summit will help establish a new cooperation regime in the region, putting aside old animosities," Yu said.
He stressed stronger ties among the three neighbors, noting the East Asian troika together accounts for 20 percent of the global economy with 25 percent of the world's population. They may account for one-third of the world's economy in 20 years, he said.
"The three countries are ushering in a new era of cooperation. I hope the three-way summit will pave the way for establishing a future-oriented relationship," Yu said.
