South Korea’s Lee visits China, hoping to sidestep Taiwan tensions

AFP | Beijing

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South Korea’s President Lee Jae Myung arrived in China yesterday for a four-day visit, eager to boost economic ties with Seoul’s largest trading partner while keeping a lid on potentially explosive issues such as Taiwan.

Lee is the first South Korean leader to visit Beijing in six years, and his trip comes less than a week after China carried out massive military drills around Taiwan, the self-ruled island it claims as part of its territory.

The exercise, featuring missiles, fighter jets, navy ships and coastguard vessels, drew a chorus of international condemnation that Seoul has notably declined to join.

Lee, accompanied by a delegation of business and tech leaders, hopes to expand economic cooperation in meetings with President Xi Jinping and other top officials.

And he hopes to possibly harness China’s clout over North Korea to support his bid to improve ties with Pyongyang.

“China is a very important cooperative partner in moving toward peace and unification on the Korean Peninsula,” Lee said during a meeting with Korean residents in Beijing, according to Yonhap news agency.

Lee added his visit “would serve as a new starting point to fill in the gaps in Korea-China relations, restore them to normal and upgrade them to a new level”.

Hours before Lee departed for Beijing, Seoul’s military said the North had fired a ballistic missile into the Sea of Japan -- its first test of the year.

Seoul has for decades trodden a fine line between China, its top trading partner, and the United States, its chief defence guarantor.

But Kang Jun-young, a professor at Seoul’s Hankuk University of Foreign Studies, said Beijing was now seeking to draw South Korea away from Washington’s sphere of influence.

“China views South Korea as the weakest link at a time when trilateral cooperation among South Korea, the United States and Japan is strengthening,” he told AFP.