The top diplomats of South Korea, China and Japan appear unlikely to meet by the year's end, South Korean officials said Wednesday, a development that could delay a possible summit among the three Asian powers.
   
The three countries have pushed to hold foreign ministers' talks to pave the way for the resumption of a trilateral summit, which has been put on hold since May 2012.
   
South Korean President Park Geun-hye made a surprise offer to hold a summit with the leaders of China and Japan during a regional summit in Myanmar in November.
   
Still, no major headway has since been made as Japan has been busy with elections, according to South Korean officials.
  
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's conservative Liberal Democratic Party kept its majority in Japan's lower house over the weekend, a landslide victory that analysts say is likely to reinforce his nationalistic approach to history and security issues.
   
China called Monday for Japan to choose "peaceful development"
after Abe's Japanese ruling coalition won the parliamentary election.
   
Analysts said that the path Abe treads is likely to be an important factor in whether a foreign ministers' meeting is held as early as possible.
   
Tensions persist between South Korea and Japan and between China and Japan over territorial and other history-related issues.
   
Japan ruled the Korean Peninsula as a colony from 1910-45. It also controlled much of China in the early part of the 20th century.
   
Despite shared views on trilateral cooperation, Seoul and Beijing remain uncomfortable with Japan's stance on its wartime history, such as its whitewashing of sex slavery.
  

Historians estimate that up to 200,000 Asian women, mostly Koreans, were forced into sexual servitude for Japan's soldiers during World War II. (Yonhap)