US President Joe Biden will host a trilateral summit with his South Korean counterpart Yoon Suk Yeol and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida in Washington on August 18, the White House said.
“At the summit (in Camp David), the leaders will celebrate a new chapter in their trilateral relationship as they reaffirm their strong bonds of friendship and the ironclad alliances between the US and Japan, and the US and the Republic of Korea,” Yonhap News Agency quoted White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre as saying in a statement on Friday, referring to South Korea by its official name.
The leaders will mainly discuss threats posed by North Korea’s evolving nuclear and missile programs, according to Jean-Pierre.
“The three leaders will discuss expanding trilateral cooperation across the Indo-Pacific and beyond — including to address the continued threat posed by the DPRK and to strengthen ties with ASEAN and the Pacific Islands,” the White House spokesperson said, referring to North Korea by its official name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.
Also confirming the development, spokesperson of the South Korean presidential office Lee Do-woon said: “This summit will be an important opportunity to elevate the cooperation among the three countries that share core values to a new level. We expect the three nations to enhance the rules-based international order together and to make more active contributions to regional and global security and economic prosperity.”
As for the summit’s agenda, the spokesperson said the three leaders will hold in-depth discussions on policy coordination regarding the North Korean nuclear and missile threats, as well as cooperation on economic security and other major regional and global issues.
The proposed summit will be the first stand-alone trilateral summit to be held as the leaders of the US, South Korea and Japan have only held trilateral summits on the sidelines of other gatherings, such as regional meetings, in the past, according to Seoul officials.
John Kirby, National Security Council coordinator for strategic communications, said the summit will also mark the first visit to Camp David by a foreign leader since 2015.
“At the summit, the leaders will celebrate a new chapter in their trilateral relationship, and they will reaffirm strong bonds of friendship,” Kirby said at a press briefing.
President Yoon Suk Yeol (L) and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida (R) inspect an honor guard during an official arrival ceremony for the Japanese leader at the presidential office in Seoul on May 7, 2023.(Yonhap/IANS)
Japanese PM Kishida’s visit comes as bilateral relations have warmed significantly following Seoul’s decision in March to compensate Korean victims of Japanese wartime forced labour without contribution from Japanese firms.
South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol met with Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida in Seoul on Sunday for the second summit in less than two months, a highly symbolic meeting demonstrating the neighbouring nations are firmly on course to the full restoration of long-frayed relations.
Yoon welcomed Kishida to the presidential office in Seoul in an official arrival ceremony that included the playing of the two countries’ national anthems and a joint honour guard review, Yonhap news agency reported.
The Japanese Prime Minister arrived in Seoul earlier on Sunday for a two-day working visit and stopped at Seoul National Cemetery to pay his respects to Korea’s fallen independence activists and war veterans before heading to the presidential office.
Kishida’s visit comes as bilateral relations have warmed significantly following Seoul’s decision in March to compensate Korean victims of Japanese wartime forced labour without contribution from Japanese firms.
Yoon travelled to Tokyo 10 days after the decision was announced and held a summit with Kishida as the first South Korean president to pay a bilateral visit to Japan in 12 years.
Kishida’s visit is also the first bilateral visit by a Japanese leader in 12 years, marking the full-scale resumption of “shuttle diplomacy,” or regular mutual visits, as agreed between Yoon and Kishida during their summit in Tokyo in March, Yonhap news agency reported.
Later in the day, Yoon and Kishida will hold a joint news conference, and then have dinner at the official presidential residence, where they will be joined by first lady Kim Keon Hee and Kishida’s wife, Yuko, according to diplomatic sources.
Fumio Kishida, Prime Minister of Japan.
The summit was first held in a small group and will later be held in an expanded format, covering issues such as security, high-tech industries, science and technology, and cooperation on youth and cultural affairs, according to the presidential office.
North Korea will feature high on the agenda as South Korea pushes to strengthen cooperation with Japan and trilaterally with the US to counter the growing threat posed by North Korea’s nuclear and missile programmes.
Yoon recently returned from a state visit to Washington, where he and US President Joe Biden agreed on a set of measures to support the US “extended deterrence” commitment to defending South Korea with all of its military capabilities, including nuclear weapons.
A joint summit statement noted the two presidents also “emphasised the importance of US-South Korea-Japan trilateral cooperation, guided by shared values, driven by innovation, and committed to shared prosperity and security”.
Trade and economic issues will likely be high on the agenda as well, given calls for South Korea and Japan to work more closely together to defend their interests in high-tech industries, such as semiconductors and batteries, as the US and the European Union move to protect their own industries.
South Koreans will be watching closely for any discussion of Japan’s plan to release contaminated water from the Fukushima nuclear power plant crippled by an earthquake and a tsunami in 2011.
South Korea hopes Japan will agree to a joint investigation of the contaminated water in addition to the monitoring currently under way by the International Atomic Energy Agency.
The two countries are also in the process of restoring each other as trusted trading partners after having removed each other from their respective “white lists” of nations eligible for preferential export treatment amid the forced labour row in 2019.
President Yoon Suk Yeol speaks during a ceremony to mark the start of business for the new year at the former presidential office Cheong Wa Dae in Seoul. (Yonhap/IANS)
The presidential office said the summit is unlikely to produce a joint statement, though the final decision will be made during the talks and the leaders will announce the outcome of the summit at a joint press conference.
South Koreans will be paying keen attention to whether Kishida goes beyond reaffirming the positions of past Japanese governments to issue an apology or express remorse for Tokyo’s 1910-45 colonial rule of the Korean Peninsula.
During the March summit, Kishida reaffirmed the Japanese government inherits on the whole the historical perceptions of past governments, including the 1998 joint declaration adopted by former President Kim Dae-jung and former Japanese Prime Minister Keizo Obuchi.
The 1998 declaration called for overcoming the past and building new relations, with Obuchi expressing remorse for the “horrendous damage and pain” Japan’s colonial rule inflicted on the Korean people.
On Monday, Kishida is scheduled to hold meetings with members of a South Korea-Japan parliamentarians’ association and chiefs of South Korea’s six business lobbies, including SK Group Chairman Chey Tae-won, who is now heading the Korea Chamber of Commerce and Industry, according to industry sources.
Japan's Prime Minister Fumio Kishida. (Photo:Xinhua/IANS)
PM Fumio Kishida will leave next week on the first multicountry trip to Africa by a Japanese leader since 2014.
The Group of Seven summit in Hiroshima is just a month away and in a bid to compete against China and Russia for influence in Africa, Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida is all set to embark on a multi-country trip, reported Nikkei Asia.
PM Kishida will leave next week on the first multicountry trip to Africa by a Japanese leader since 2014. His four stops – Egypt, Ghana, Kenya and Mozambique – are all part of the Global South, a loosely defined collection of over 100 developing nations. The valuable natural resources acquired by many Global South countries, and their general diplomatic aversion to the United States, have brought overtures from Russia and China to Tokyo’s alarm.
Kishida has told his aides that Chinese President Xi Jinping and senior Chinese officials “have been going all over Africa and Latin America,” adding, “At this rate, we’ll lose to them,” as per Nikkei Asia.
Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang made a visit to Egypt in January, a month after Xi met with his Egyptian counterpart Abdel Fattah el-Sisi in Saudi Arabia.
Last year alone Kenya’s trade with China spiked 27 per cent, and polling there shows positive views of Beijing soaring to 82 per cent from 58 per cent in 2021.
According to China’s official Xinhua News Agency, In Mozambique, a resource-abundant place, a Chinese-backed liquefied natural gas project began production in November. And Ghana’s finance minister paid a visit to China last month to discuss debt restructuring after its default in December, read a report published in Nikkei Asia.
Support from the Global South will be crucial to the G7’s efforts to isolate China and Russia.
G7 foreign ministers, in a statement after their meeting this week, stressed reinforcing an “international order based on the rule of law,” calling out Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and China’s negligence of international law in the East and South China seas.
But what G7 lacks is the economic dominance it once had. Members that accounted for more than 60 per cent of the global gross domestic product from the 1970s to the 1990s now have shares of less than 50 per cent.
Tokyo’s new outreach efforts go beyond Africa. Yoshimasa Hayashi, Japan’s Foreign Minister, is planning a trip to Latin America later this month.
Peru and Chile are both members of the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership, a trade agreement to which China has applied. Hayashi is expected to argue that new members must adhere to the CPTPP’s high degree of trade liberalisation, according to Nikkei Asia.
Japan seeks to strengthen ties with the Global South by providing finance, training, and other assistance to nations dealing with high energy costs, food shortages, and climate change, while also conveying Tokyo’s positions on the Ukraine crisis and the geopolitical situation in East Asia.
Japan announced plans last month to provide development assistance based on the needs of recipients, Nikkei Asia reported. (ANI)
Video footage showed members of the public fleeing and a man being arrested following the incident.
Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida on Saturday was evacuated unscathed after an object that appeared to be a smoke bomb was thrown at him during a public event in Wakayama City, local media reports said, adding that the suspect has been arrested.
The reports said that Kishida immediately took cover and left the scene at Saikazaki Port after the incident, adding there were no injuries or damage, reports Xinhua news agency.
The suspect has been arrested, national broadcaster NHK confirmed in a report citing police sources, without giving any further details.
NHK footage showed crowds of people running away as smoke filled the area where a loud explosion was heard, and police officers pressing the suspect to the ground.
The object, resembling a flare with smoke, was thrown at Kishida at around 11.30 a.m. (local time) while he was preparing to deliver an outdoor address supporting the by-election of the House of Representatives, Kyodo News said.
The reports said that Kishida immediately took cover and left the scene at Saikazaki Port after the incident, adding there were no injuries or damage. (Photo: Xinhua/IANS)
Kishida, currently at the Wakayama Prefecture main police headquarters, has cancelled the addressed, the news outlet added.
The incident occurred as Japan is hosting G7 ministerial meetings in Sapporo and the city of Karuizawa in Nagano ahead of the bloc’s leaders’ summit in Hiroshima next month.
The incident comes less than a year after former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe was shot dead during a campaign event in July 2022.
People wearing face masks walk through the Shibuya scramble crossing in Tokyo, Japan, Jan. 21, 2021. (Xinhua/Zhang Xiaoyu/IANS)
Prime Minister Fumio Kishida says Japan is on the brink due to falling birth rate, reports Asian Lite News
Low birthrate crisis is deepening in Japan. Prime Minister Fumio Kishida says his country is on the brink of not being able to function as a society because of its falling birth rate, media reports said.
Kishida said it was a case of “now or never”, the BBC reported.
Japan – population 125 million – is estimated to have had fewer than 800,000 births last year. In the 1970s, that figure was more than two million.
Birth rates are slowing in many countries, including Japan’s neighbours.
But the issue is particularly acute in Japan as life expectancy has risen in recent decades, meaning there are a growing number of older people, and a declining numbers of workers to support them, BBC reported.
Japan’s Prime Minister Fumio Kishida. (Photo_Xinhua_IANS)
Japan now has the world’s second-highest proportion of people aged 65 and over – about 28 per cent – after the tiny state of Monaco, according to World Bank data.
“Japan is standing on the verge of whether we can continue to function as a society,” Kishida told lawmakers.
“Focusing attention on policies regarding children and child-rearing is an issue that cannot wait and cannot be postponed.”
He said that he eventually wants the government to double its spending on child-related programmes. A new government agency to focus on the issue would be set up in April, he added, BBC reported.
However, Japanese governments have tried to promote similar strategies before, without success.
Photo taken with a mobile phone shows passengers stranded in a JR Yokosuka Line train following an earthquake, Japan, March 16, 2022. (Photo by Sun Jialin/Xinhua/IANS)
Japan has continued implementing strict immigration laws despite some relaxations, but some experts are now saying that the rules should be loosened further to help tackle its ageing society.
Falling birth rates are driven by a range of factors, including rising living costs, more women in education and work, as well as greater access to contraception, leading to women choosing to have fewer children, BBC reported.
