China, Japan and South Korea will hold a summit during Chinese Premier Li Keqiang's visit to South Korea, China and South Korea said on Monday. The summit will be the first of this kind since 2012.
Li will visit South Korea from October 31 to November 2 and he will attend the summit, Chinese foreign ministry announced on Monday.
It will be Li's first visit to South Korea as premier and the first visit to the country by a Chinese premier in five years, said ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying.
Hua added that Li's visit will be good for relations between the two countries and will benefit regional peace, development and prosperity. South Korean President Park Geun-hye's office said she would meet Li on October 31 in Seoul.
Dates for the trilateral summit were not announced, but Park said this month that she hoped the three-way meeting would help clear obstacles to better relations with Tokyo and boost stability in Northeast Asia.
"The summit is of great significance for the stable and peaceful development of East Asia and could generate a wider range of economic growth after the summit is resumed," Lü Chao, director of the Korean Research Center at the Liaoning Academy of Social Sciences, told the Global Times.
Japan's ties with China and South Korea have long been strained, as Japanese leaders have been reluctant to apologize for the country's wartime past.
Lü noted that economic cooperation between Japan and the other two countries has been hindered by Japan's stances on political issues, and though he expects that breakthroughs can be made at the summit, he also added that the grudges and hurt caused by Japan's incorrect views of history cannot be erased by one meeting.
The summit, held annually since 2008, was discontinued in 2012 amid diplomatic tension between Japan and South Korea caused by Japan's refusal to do more to compensate Korean women forced into prostitution in Japanese brothels during World War II.
Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Liu Zhenmin told reporters in Beijing that while issues of history would inevitably be brought up, the three countries also have important shared economic interests and thus need to get relations back on track.
