Korean and Japanese finance ministers meeting today
Japanese Finance Minister Shunichi Suzuki and his South Korean counterpart Choi Sang-mok are meeting today to discuss strengthening bilateral cooperation to reduce their currencies’ volatility.
Today’s bilateral meeting will be followed by a separate meeting in Washington tomorrow. There, the Japanese and Korean industry ministers will be joined by their US counterpart for the first trilateral industry meeting between the three countries. At the meeting, they are expected to announce strengthened economic cooperation to boost critical technology development and to counter China’s increasing supply chain dominance.
This series of meetings follows the Camp David trilateral meeting between US President Joe Biden, Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol in August 2023. At Camp David, the three leaders agreed to strengthen commerce, industry and military cooperation. The enhanced three-way cooperation was made possible by the rapprochement of Tokyo and Seoul, following years of frosty relations, mainly due to unresolved questions of Japanese atrocities during World War Two.
Strategic cooperation among the three Pacific allies has progressed rapidly since the election of President Yoon in 2022 and will likely continue to do so. However, the trilateral format could be jeopardized based on the outcome of the U.S. presidential elections. Despite this, Japan-South Korea cooperation will likely continue, given that the two countries are facing an increasingly hostile China. Japan-Korea relations are not a given, bilateral relations could still become fraught as South Korea’s legislature is controlled by the opposition, which is opposed to President Yoon’s plans of security cooperation with Japan.
