CHINA’S, Japan’s and South Korea’s foreign ministers met today at the South Korean city of Busan in a bid to revive trilateral co-operation following a four-year hiatus.

They agreed to resume their leaders’ trilateral summit — but without a specific timing.

And tensions between the three were centre-stage, as China and Japan clashed over the latter’s release of treated radioactive wastewater into the sea from the ruined Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant, which has prompted a Chinese ban on Japanese seafood imports.

Japanese Foreign Minister Yoko Kamikawa reiterated demands that China lift the ban, while China’s Wang Yi retorted that Japan’s action had been “irresponsible” and called for an independent monitoring mechanism for the process.

Japan and South Korea, whose relations have recently warmed following strenuous US efforts to get them to co-operate — between them they host 80,000 US soldiers — also clashed over a South Korean court ruling last week that ordered Japan to compensate so-called “comfort women,” Korean women forced into sexual slavery by the Japanese army during World War II. Ms Kamikawa said the court ruling was “absolutely unacceptable.”

An editorial in China’s Global Times newspaper said the “extraterritorial” US presence in East Asia cast a “dark cloud” over trilateral relations and urged Japan and South Korea not to become “two flanks of the US front line for containment of China.”

Japan’s and South Korea’s foreign ministers called on China to do more to stop North Korea testing missiles and to press Pyongyang to take steps towards nuclear disarmament.