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FUKUOKA, Japan — South Korea reached bilateral deals with Japan and China that it hopes will bolster its economy against the global financial downturn, as the three nations gathered for their first trilateral summit Saturday.

The currency swap arrangements were on the top of the agenda for South Korea's President Lee Myung-bak, who met first with Japan's Prime Minister Taro Aso. Meetings with China's Premier Wen Jiabao were to follow.

The leaders were also expected to discuss territorial issues, climate change and the global financial crunch during the one-day summit in the southern Japan city of Fukuoka. About 5,000 police were mobilized to secure the area.

Clearing one major goal, the South Korean and Japanese central banks increased a bilateral swap facility to the equivalent of $20 billion, the Bank of Korea said in statement Friday. The bank also announced a deal with the People's Bank of China worth about $26 billion.

Swaps generally entail one central bank borrowing a currency from another and offering an equivalent amount of its own as collateral. Seoul has seen its reserves dwindle, and feared that without the swap arrangements it could suffer a foreign exchange crisis due to the global financial turmoil.

The South Korean currency has declined 32 percent this year amid record selling of South Korean stocks by foreign investors.

The three Northeast Asian nations have held meetings on the sidelines of broader international meetings but this will be the first time they are holding an independent three-way summit.

One topic deliberately left off the official agenda was lingering animosity over Japan's pre-1945 colonization of Korea and its often brutal aggression on the Asian mainland in the first half of the last century.

Such issues have frequently flared up in the past and continue to be a thorn in relations.

Japanese officials said it was "significant" that the three countries were putting such issues behind them and trying to approach the summit with a more forward-looking stance.

Other sensitive issues remain, however.

Japan was expected to express concern over the entry of Chinese vessels' earlier this week into waters Tokyo claims near disputed southern islands known as the Senkaku in Japanese and the Diaoyu in Chinese.

Japan lodged a protest with Beijing on Monday after the ships spent nine hours near the islands, which are claimed by Japan, China and Taiwan.

After the summit, the three leaders are expected to issue statements on holding further annual meetings on disaster management and on the financial crisis.