South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol speaks on the government budget at the National Assembly in Seoul, South Korea, 25 October 2022. JEON HEON-KYUN/Pool via REUTERS
SEOUL, Nov 9 (Reuters) – South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol will attend meetings of ASEAN and the Group of 20 industrialised nations this month, a senior administration official said on Wednesday.
South Korea is arranging a possible bilateral summit between Yoon and U.S. President Joe Biden as well as a trilateral summit involving the United States and Japan on the sidelines of the events, according to South Korea’s Yonhap news agency.
“We are arranging summits with key countries on the occasion of attending the ASEAN and G20 meetings,” Yoon’s national security adviser, Kim Sung-han, told a briefing.
Nothing has been decided regarding a possible one-on-one meeting between Yoon and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, Yonhap said.
The latest in-person meeting between Yoon and Kishida was in September. The two leaders agreed then on the need to improve relations dogged by historical disputes.
Yoon, who took office in May, has been keen to improve relations with Tokyo at a time when both countries face North Korea’s evolving nuclear and missile threats.
The September meeting, which took place in New York on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly, was the first between leaders of the two countries since 2019.
Reporting by Soo-hyang Choi and Choonsik Yoo; Editing by Christian Schmollinger and Bradley Perrett
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