Top diplomats from the Indo-Pacific region were divided over North Korea's nuclear and missile programs and Russia's war in Ukraine at their meeting on Friday in Jakarta.
Japanese Foreign Minister Yoshimasa Hayashi voiced concerns over the situation in the East and South China seas, where China has been increasing its maritime assertiveness, at the 27-member ASEAN Regional Forum, the Japanese government said.
His counterparts from like-minded nations, including U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, also brought up the same issue about China, according to diplomatic sources.
The rift between the U.S.-led major democracies and the China-Russia camp has been widening over the Ukraine war since February 2022 and China's intensifying military activities in the Indo-Pacific.
The Group of Seven countries have taken the initiative in implementing economic sanctions on Russia over the aggression against its neighbor. But China and most of the "Global South" countries, including India, have not joined in the measures.
The annual ARF gathering organized by the Association of Southeast Asian Nations is one of the few multilateral events involving North Korea, although North Korean Foreign Minister Choe Son Hui was absent, replaced by the nation's ambassador to Indonesia An Kwang Il, the sources said.
Pyongyang last sent its foreign minister to the ARF talks, known as Asia's largest political and security conference, in 2018.
The international meeting came two days after North Korea fired what its official Korean Central News Agency said was the "Hwasong-18" intercontinental ballistic missile toward the Sea of Japan, the second of its kind following a test on April 13.
The ICBM missile is viewed as capable of reaching the U.S. mainland if launched on a normal trajectory.
At the ARF event, Hayashi strongly condemned North Korea's ICBM launch as posing a threat to peace and safety of the international community, according to the Japanese Foreign Ministry.
On Thursday, the G-7 foreign ministers condemned Pyongyang for the "brazen launch," calling it a violation of U.N. Security Council resolutions banning the country from utilizing ballistic technology.
China and Russia have been trying to defend North Korea, saying that the United States is fanning confrontation by criticizing the nation and conducting military drills with Japan and South Korea near the Korean Peninsula.
Fears linger that Pyongyang may be preparing its seventh nuclear test, which would be the first since September 2017.
Hayashi also strongly condemned Russia's invasion of Ukraine, demanding the Russian forces' "immediate, complete and unconditional withdrawal" from Ukrainian territory, and some other nations made similar remarks, according to the Japanese ministry.
As for Japan's plan to release treated radioactive water into the sea around this summer from the Fukushima nuclear complex, crippled by a massive earthquake and subsequent tsunami in 2011, no participants took up the issue, a Japanese government official said.
China's top diplomat Wang Yi criticized the water discharge plan at some other ASEAN-related meetings held in the Indonesian capital this week.
Later on Friday, Hayashi and Blinken held trilateral talks with their South Korean counterpart Park Jin, condemning the North Korean ICBM test while agreeing to further ramp up their three-way cooperation.
