S. Korea, U.S., Japan to hold defense talks ahead of Obama's Asia trip

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S. Korea, U.S., Japan to hold defense talks ahead of Obama's Asia trip​

SEOUL, April 13 (Yonhap) -- South Korea, the United States and Japan plan to hold a high-profile defense meeting in Washington this week in their latest effort to boost trilateral security cooperation ahead of U.S. President Barack Obama's upcoming visit to the key Asian allies, Seoul's defense ministry said Sunday.
Deputy Defense Minister Ryu Je-seung will attend the Defense Trilateral Talks slated for April 17-18. He will also hold a bilateral meeting with David Helvey, U.S. deputy assistant secretary of defense for East Asia, for two days prior to the tripartite session that also includes the Japanese delegation, the ministry said.
The three-way talks mark the latest return to diplomacy between South Korea and Japan, whose own relations are tense due to historical and territorial disputes, since the leaders of the three nations met on the sidelines of a nuclear safety summit in The Netherlands last month.
Last week, top nuclear envoys from the three nations met in Washington to discuss coordination on issues related to North Korea, including its nuclear and missile programs and human rights abuses.
Washington has sought to enhance trilateral cooperation to maintain a united front against Pyongyang and to keep an increasingly assertive China in check, while faced with limited resources to commit to the Asia-Pacific region amid defense spending cuts.
In a show of the U.S. commitment to Asia, Obama is scheduled to embark on a trip to Asia later this month, which will include stops in Japan, South Korea, Malaysia and the Philippines.
South Korea's ties with Japan have been strained by what Seoul sees as Tokyo's failure to atone for atrocities during its 1910-1945 colonial rule, especially since conservative Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's controversial visit last year to a shrine that honors Class-A war criminals among other war dead.
In a sign of efforts to repair their frayed ties, Seoul and Tokyo agreed hold director-general level talks on Wednesday to address Japan's wartime sexual enslavement of Korean women during World War II, Seoul's foreign affairs ministry said Sunday.
It is the first time for the two nations to hold official dialogue that specifically address the sensitive historical issue since the Japanese government offered a formal apology to the comfort women in 1991.
Junichi Ihara, head of the Japanese Foreign Ministry's Asian and Oceanian Affairs Bureau, and Lee Sang-deok, director-general of the South Korean Foreign Ministry's Northeast Asian Affairs Bureau, are expected to attend.
Based on that development, the Japanese government is apparently exploring the possibility of a summit meeting between the two countries.
South Korean President Park Geun-hye has repeatedly refused offers to hold a bilateral summit with Abe, citing Japan's refusal to apologize for past wrongdoings.

S. Korea, U.S., Japan to hold defense talks ahead of Obama's Asia trip | GlobalPost