TOKYO (Reuters) – Japanese Foreign Minister Takeshi Iwaya will travel to South Korea on Monday to shore up security cooperation between the East Asian neighbours and their mutual U.S. ally that is meant to counter China’s growing regional power.
Iwaya, who will be the first Japanese foreign minister to visit Seoul in seven years, will meet with his South Korean counterpart Cho Tae-yul and Acting President Choi Sang-mok, the Japanese government said.
Iwaya aims to “reconfirm” the importance of relations and that the two countries will continue to coordinate policies including those on North Korea in the “light of the current strategic environment,” it said in a press release.
Deepening trilateral security cooperation could be more difficult amid the political turmoil in South Korea prompted by the impeachment of President Yoon Suk Yeol.
The transition to a second Trump administration on Jan. 20 also means that none of the original leaders who established the three-way security cooperation pact in 2023 – U.S. President Joe Biden, Yoon, and former Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida—remain in power.
“The trilateral will move forward, the real question is will the trilateral thrive,” The U.S. Ambassador to Japan Rahm Emanuel said at a press conference in Tokyo on Friday before he returns to the United States. It’s going to take work to nurture it and develop it,” he added.
South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol has been holed up in his hillside villa in Seoul since parliament voted to impeach and suspend him last month over his short-lived martial law decree on Dec. 3.
Presidential security service and military guards there have blocked investigators from arresting him.
Iwaya’s planned visit comes after the South Korean foreign minister met last week with outgoing U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who expressed “serious concerns” over some of the actions Yoon took over the course of his martial law declaration. Iwaya met Blinken in Tokyo the following day.
Iwaya will travel to the Philippines after South Korea to discuss security and economic cooperation and will visit Palau to attend the second inauguration of President Surangel Whipp before returning to Japan.
(Reporting by Tim Kelly; Editing by Kim Coghill)
