CRI听力:John Kerry Kicks off Asia Tour

US Secretary of State John Kerry is now in South Korea, on his fifth trip to Asia as America's top diplomat.

He will also be visiting China and Indonesia.

Su Yi has more.

During his first stop, in Seoul, Kerry is set to meet his South Korean counterpart, Yun Byung-se, and is expected to express deep concerns over the recent spike in tensions between US allies South Korea and Japan.

South Korea is angry over a recent visit by Japan's prime minister and other top officials to a controversial war shrine in Tokyo.

The Yasukuni Shrine honours Japan's war dead, including 14 convicted Class-A war criminals.

Japan is not on Kerry's itinerary.

He is also expected to probe Seoul's thoughts on ways to accelerate cooperation between Washington, Beijing, Seoul and Tokyo on bringing North Korea back to the nuclear negotiating table.

His arrival in Seoul comes one day after senior North and South Korean officials held their highest-level talks in years.

The two Koreas have also just announced another round of talks, to be held this Friday.

After South Korea, Kerry will fly to China, and then onto Indonesia, where he plans to meet with the chief of regional bloc ASEAN in Jakarta.

Meantime, the White House has announced U.S. President Barack Obama is planning to visit Japan, South Korea, Malaysia and the Philippines in late April.

Spokesman Jay Carney says the upcoming trip is part of Obama's "ongoing commitment to increase U.S. diplomatic, economic and security engagement with countries in the Asia-Pacific region.

Obama had to cancel a scheduled trip to Asia in October due to a 16-day government shutdown caused by a budget impasse in Congress.

For CRI, I'm Su Yi.