President Park Geun-hye will hold a bilateral summit with her Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping on sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation to be hosted by Beijing next month.

The summit plan was first revealed during a meeting between Park and Tang Jiaxuan, former Chinese foreign minister, held at Cheong Wa Dae on Tuesday afternoon.

“I know that President Park will attend the APEC summit in Beijing two weeks later,” Tang told Park at the beginning of their meeting. “At that time, President Xi Jinping is to hold an important bilateral summit with the president (Park),” he said.

The remark is likely to raise hopes that the two countries will be able to further strengthen diplomatic ties amid growing tension on the Korean Peninsula, and that the two sides will be able to conclude their ongoing negotiations on a free trade agreement. The summit between Park and Xi comes four months after they met and held a bilateral talk in Seoul during an official visit by the Chinese president in July.

Tang told Park that the South Korean president is widely viewed in China as “a respectable guest” and “an intimate friend.” The former top foreign policymaker also said that her previous meeting with Chinese premier Li Keqiang was a success. The two met on the sidelines of the ASEM summit in Milan last week.

The meeting between Park and former Chinese State Councilor Tang Jiaxuan drew keen attention as they were expected to have an intensive talk on Pyongyang’s mixed signals regarding proposed inter-Korean talks.

During a surprise visit by a trio of senior officials from Pyongyang to the South Korean port city of Incheon, both sides agreed to resume the second round of high-level talks sometime in late October or early November.

The hopes for a breakthrough in tense ties, however, quickly faded after the two Koreas exchanged fire near the Northern Limit Line, the de facto sea border, and also near the Demilitarized Zone near Paju, Gyeonggi Province. The North threatened that the expected talks are in danger of being canceled and refused to respond to Seoul’s proposal to hold the dialogue on Oct. 31. Park has been repeatedly urging North Korea to keep its promise to hold the inter-Korean dialogue.

It was Park’s seventh meeting with Tang, an expert on Korean issues. He served as China’s foreign minister between 1998 and 2003. Before he retired in 2008, he served as a state councilor spearheading Chinese foreign policy. Park first met Tang in 2005 when she visited China to discuss ways to curb North Korea’s nuclear ambition as the chairwoman of the then-ruling Grand National Party. Tang met Park last year when she was preparing for her first summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping and sought Beijing’s support in pressuring North Korea to abandon its nuclear programs.

Beijing has long been a key economic provider and diplomatic protector of Pyongyang. In recent years, however, China has been taking a tough stance toward North Korea, backing a United Nations sanctions resolution to prod the isolated regime to give up its nuclear weapons as a bargaining chip for negotiations with neighboring countries.

Meanwhile, during a separate meeting, a top Japanese security official said that Japan will make efforts to improve the strained ties with South Korea, particularly to mark the 50th anniversary of the normalization of diplomatic ties.

“South Korea and Japan share strategic interests as the closest neighbors,” said Shotaro Yachi, national security advisor to Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, during a meeting with Park’s top security advisor, Kim Kwan-jin. “The two should put efforts in improving the bilateral ties in the event marking the 50th anniversary of the normalizing of diplomatic ties between Korea and Japan next year,” he said.

Kim also agreed that the improvement of bilateral ties between the two countries is crucial for the peace and security of Northeast Asia and beyond.

The two also discussed North Korea-related issues and agreed to cooperate to persuade the North to abandon its nuclear programs. The meeting was widely seen as an attempt by the two sides to improve strained bilateral ties. The visit by Japan’s top security advisor came some days after Japan proposed a summit between the two leaders.

In late September, Abe sent a personal letter to Park, expressing hopes for a summit talk this fall. Observers say that Yachi was sent to discuss the details of a possible summit in November on the sidelines of APEC in Beijing. Expectations for the bilateral meeting between the two leaders have been growing. However, officials in Seoul remained cautious about making comments on the issue. Park and Abe have not met since Park took office early last year. She has refused to meet Abe before Japan apologizes for its wartime atrocities including its sexual enslavement of Korean women.

By Cho Chung-un (christory@heraldcorp.com)