The specter of the Yalta Conference is haunting Korea as the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit approaches. Such concerns reflect either a victim mentality or diplomatic overstatement. During a recent meeting with a Chinese official, a high-ranking South Korean official reportedly expressed concern that an upcoming trilateral summit among the U.S., China and Russia, to be held on the sidelines of the APEC summit, should not turn into another Yalta Conference. The original Yalta talks were held in 1945 among the so-called Big Three world powers: the U.S., the United Kingdom and the Soviet Union. At the time, the three powers agreed that Korea, then under Japanese colonial rule, would be placed under a multilateral trusteeship before gaining full independence from Japan. In the years that followed, Korea was divided into two, with the South placed under U.S. military administration and the North under Soviet military administration. Korea had no voice in the process, and its fate was determined by the major powers of the time. On Saturday, the foreign ministry official told r