Fisheries minister Cho Seung-hwan is set to represent South Korea at China's Third Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation this week.

A presidential office official told KBS on Tuesday that Cho's participation at the gathering on the initiative’s tenth anniversary is expected to help Seoul discern regional issues at hand, especially as the country shares the Yellow Sea with China.

The minister's attendance also comes as South Korea is seeking to host a trilateral summit with China and Japan within the year following a recent series of high-level dialogue between Seoul and Beijing.

Over four-thousand experts and government officials from 140 countries and 30 international organizations are expected to attend the two-day conference that starts on Tuesday in Beijing.

Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin are set to meet for summit talks on Wednesday.

Launched by Xi in 2013, the Belt and Road Initiative is a vast collection of development and investment projects initially devised to link East Asia and Europe through physical infrastructure, having since expanded to Africa, Oceania and Latin America.