After years of tense relations, political leaders from China, Japan and South Korea have agreed to restore cooperation amid strained relations in the region. The trilateral meeting was the first three-way summit since 2012 between the East Asian powers.
Chinese Premier Li Keqiang, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and South Korean President Park Geun-hye agreed to accelerate talks for trilateral free-trade agreements and to bolster cultural exchanges between the countries.
In addition, China and Japan have agreed to restart high-level talks on the exploration of natural resources in the East China Sea. Abe and Li agreed that their respective nations should establish maritime and air communications mechanisms to prevent regional conflict.
Relations between China and Japan have been particularly strained this year due to Beijing's offshore constructions near disputed territories in the East China Sea. In August, the Japanese government has released 14 photos of Chinese offshore platforms in the South China Sea.
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Park and Abe agreed to break the impasse on the issue of "comfort women" forced to serve in Japanese military brothels during World War II, but both sides decided the issue couldn't be resolved before 2016.
Analysts in South Korea and Japan lauded the agreement as a breakthrough. Lee Won-deog, head of the Japanese studies center at Seoul's Kookmin University, said the meeting "removed the obstacle to future summits between the two countries."
Haruki Wada, a leading historian of the Korean War at Tokyo University, told South Korean newspaper Segye Ilbo that "a solution would be reached soon," now that the leaders of both countries have made public their commitment to ending the issue of comfort women.
Japan and South Korea are major commercial partners, even as they jockey for markets. South Korea was Japan's No. 3 trading partner last year and vice versa.
Japan was passed by China for the world's second-largest economy several years ago, but its people are far more affluent on average, and it's a manufacturing and technology powerhouse with globally recognized brands.
Despite a decline in population and two decades of domestic economic malaise, Japan's prowess in fields from robotics to architecture and pop culture means it is a role model for many South Koreans.
The mobile and Internet startup scene in South Korea, one of the world's most wired places, meanwhile, has attracted Japanese venture capitalists.
There is also interest in Seoul in a major trade initiative that includes Japan and the United States: the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a yet-to-be ratified free trade arrangement among a dozen nations.
"American officials are worried about accidental confrontations between China and Japan," Agawa said.
"Some of the people I have talked to privately indicated that was how the Soviet Union and the US worked together when they were at the height of the cold war.
"What I heard them saying was that: do you have that kind of mechanism between China and Japan? If not, we have experience and that could be useful."
When Abe became Prime Minister almost three years ago, he vowed to restore Japan's standing as a "first-tier country" by implementing an economic stimulus package, dubbed "Abenomics," and reinterpreting Japan's constitution to stiffen the country's defence posture. But, whereas Abenomics was enacted quickly, the Diet enacted the defense legislation only recently – and after more than a year of effort.
Many in Abe's Liberal Democratic Party would have preferred fundamental reform of Japan's defense doctrine, by removing the constitution's limits on the country's armed forces. But public opinion and Abe's coalition partner, Komeito, did not allow it.
Nonetheless, Japan's interlocutors at the Seoul summit, China and South Korea, which suffered enormously from Japanese aggression in the last century, have protested loudly. Both are suspicious of Abe, who exacerbated tensions with nationalist rhetoric and a visit to the controversial Yasukuni Shrine early in his current administration. Indeed, Chinese President Xi Jinping has resisted meeting with Abe, as has Park, who will do so for the first time at the Seoul summit.
On the other hand, Abe has repaired the strained relations with the US that Japan had under his predecessors, and President Barack Obama reiterated the strength of the bilateral alliance during Abe's state visit to the White House last April. Under the new defense guidelines, US and Japanese forces are able to plan and exercise more effectively, and the alliance is in its best condition in decades.
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