Japanese Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama, South Korean President Lee Myung-bak (center) and Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao

South Korea, Japan, and China announced a new plan today for cooperation and the establishment of a secretariat in the future, concluding their annual summit held on Jeju Island.

South Korean President Lee Myung-bak, Japanese Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama, and Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao pointed out that despite rapid development in their partnership over the past ten years, there was still room for better cooperation in promoting economic, political, social, and cultural exchanges, as well as jointly addressing regional and global issues.

“We need to combine our capacities and enhance trilateral cooperation to a higher level so that our future-oriented comprehensive cooperative partnership will be more solid,” they said in their joint press release. For that, the three countries plan to establish the Trilateral Cooperation Secretariat in South Korea in 2011, it said.

The secretariat will provide administrative and technical support for the operation and management of trilateral consultative mechanisms and facilitate the exploration and implementation of cooperative projects. “By the year 2012, we will endeavor to complete the joint study for a free trade agreement (FTA) among China, Japan, and South Korea, which was launched in May 2010,” the leaders said.

The regional powers will also continue to strive to denuclearize the Korean Peninsula on the basis of the September 19, 2005 Joint Statement, produced at the Six Party Talks on North Korea’s nuclear program. They also adopted joint statements on improving standards cooperation and strengthening cooperation in science.

South Korea, Japan, and China began holding three-way summits in 1999 on the sidelines of the ASEAN+3 foreign ministerial talks. They launched the summit in its present form in 2008, taking turns as host. Japan will host the next year’s meeting.

Read the Joint Press Release here and about Trilateral Cooperation Vision 2020 here.