According to unofficial information, President Yoon Suk Yeol will receive Li Qiang and Kishida in separate meetings. The trilateral meeting, postponed from 2019 due to Covid-19 pandemic, and the tense relations between Seoul and Tokyo, will take place on Monday.

Yoon and Kishida are trying to overcome the historic enmity between the two nations to put together a common front in the face of what they see as a nuclear threat from the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK).

International media have speculated that the summit may also address the issue of alleged Japanese and South Korean abductees by Pyongyang in the 1970s and 1980s.

But according to analysts, China will steer the affairs to guide them along eminently economic channels, without much resistance from Kishida and Yoon considering the high level of trade between the parties and their interdependence in the scientific-technological sphere and cooperation in various areas.

jrr/jav/lam/asg