Asian leaders agree to improve ties

U.S. envoy pleased with fresh effort to improve strained relationship.

SEOUL, SOUTH KOREA — A senior U.S. official said Wednesday an unexpected meeting this week between the leaders of South Korea and Japan was an “encouraging sign” that the Asian U.S. allies are on track to improve a relationship strained by deep disagreements over trade and history.

David Stilwell, U.S. assistant secretary of state for East Asia and the Pacific, spoke while visiting South Korea weeks before the expiration of a military intelligence-sharing agreement between Seoul and Tokyo. The Trump administration has been pressuring its allies to keep the deal, which symbolizes the countries’ trilateral security cooperation with Washington in face of the

North Korean nuclear threat and China’s growing influence.

On Monday, South Korean President Moon Jae-in initiated an 11-minute meeting with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on the sidelines of a regional forum in Thailand, the latest step taken by Seoul to de-escalate the feud with the deadline on the military agreement approaching.

“President Moon and Prime

Minister Abe had the opportunity to talk and that’s an encouraging sign as we watched the relationship improve,” Stilwell told reporters after a meeting with South Korean Foreign Minister Kang Kyung-wha.

Seoul’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement that during her talks with Stilwell and Keith Krach, U.S. undersecretary of state for economic growth, energy and the environment, Kang explained South Korean efforts to find “rational solutions” through dialogue over the issues with Japan.

Stilwell also met with Kim Hyunchong, deputy chief of South Korea’s presidential National Security Office, and they had “constructive and future-oriented” talks over the Seoul-Tokyo military pact and ongoing negotiations between Washington and Seoul on sharing the costs for keeping U.S. troops in South Korea, the presidential Blue House said. South Korean and U.S. officials didn’t share specifics.