China
President Xi will attend the 4th EEF and is expected to address its plenary session.
It will be the first time a Chinese president will participate in the EEF and also the most important high-level exchange in China-Russia bilateral ties in the second half of the year.
Through Xi's participation in the forum, China-Russia relations are bound to grow from strength to strength and the cooperation between the two in the Far East will gain new progress, Chinese Assistant Foreign Minister Zhang Hanhui told the media last Friday.
"I have no doubt that the visit of the president of the People's Republic of China to Vladivostok will become an important milestone in developing relations between Russia and China," said Anton Kobyakov, an adviser to the Russian president.
"President Xi's attendance will inject new strong and lasting impetus into the development of China-Russia comprehensive strategic partnership of coordination," Chinese Ambassador to Russia Li Hui told Xinhua in a recent interview.
He also said that Xi's visit sends a signal to the world that only by upholding the principle of mutual benefit and win-win results and building a community with a shared future for mankind can promote regional economic development.
South Korea
Prime Minister of South Korea Lee Nak-yon will pay a three-day visit to Russia from Monday, during which he will attend the 2018 EEF and meet Putin.
Lee will deliver a keynote speech at the forum to introduce the achievements and blueprint of the "New Northern Policy" advanced by the South Korean government.
He will also attend the South Korea-Russia business dialogue to encourage entrepreneurs of the two countries to further strengthen cooperation and exchanges.
The specific implementation of the summit between South Korea and Russia in June, the implementation of the "nine bridges" plan and the plan to realize peace on the Korean Peninsula will be discussed.
Putin and South Korean President Moon Jae-in first met in September last year when the ROK leader attended the 2017 Eastern Economic, an event at which he addressed his "nine bridges" of ROK-Russia cooperation program and spoke of developing trilateral projects with the DPRK in Far Eastern Russia.
The so-called "nine bridges" refers to nine major areas of cooperation, the first of which is natural gas.
Japan
Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe will attend the forum with a 400-member delegation and meet Putin.
"I will have frank discussions with Putin on the issue of the Southern Kuril Islands in the Pacific," Abe said, NHK reported.
He also said that a peace treaty will possibly be advanced on the territorial issues between Japan and Russia.
The four disputed Pacific islands, known as the Northern Territories in Japan and the Southern Kurils in Russia, were occupied by Soviet troops in 1945 and are currently under Russian control.
Russia and Japan have long been at odds due to the territorial dispute over these islands, which has blocked a peace treaty between the two countries since the end of WWII.
DPRK
DPRK leader Kim Jong Un will not attend the EEF, but will send a delegation of officials. Moreover, Kim has confirmed his readiness to visit Russia..
The RIA news agency quoted the speaker of the upper house of the Russian parliament, Valentina Matviyenko, who met the DPRK leader in Pyongyang on Saturday, as saying that Kim also appreciates Russia's key role in resolving the Korean peninsula issue.
South Korea's Moon told Russian media in June that if peace can be established on the Korean Peninsula, "an era of South-North economic cooperation will take off in earnest and I believe it must be a three-way cooperation that includes Russia."
The inter-Korean summit from September 18-20, and the absence of long-range missiles on display in the military parade to celebrate the 70th anniversary of the founding of the DPRK, as well as the variation in US-DPRK relations, indicate the Korean Peninsula issue may be an inevitable topic at the EEF this year.
