South Korea and China seek to defrost ties ahead of trilateral summit with Japan

The deterioration in ties was clearly visible in 2023, as South Korea moved closer to the United States, its security ally.

Wendy Teo

Wendy Teo

The Straits Times

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Representational photo of Seoul. To mend ties, South Korea dispatched Foreign Minister Cho Tae-yul on a visit to Beijing on May 13 and 14, the first in more than six years by a South Korean foreign minister. PHOTO: UNSPLASH

May 15, 2024

SEOUL – As South Korea gears up to host the first such trilateral summit in more than four years with China and Japan later in May, an important task at hand is to reconcile strained bilateral relations with Beijing.

While the administration under South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol has seen vastly improved ties with Japan in the last two years, ties with China have been decidedly frosty.

The deterioration in ties was clearly visible in 2023, as South Korea moved closer to the United States, its security ally. The US-Japan-South Korea summit held at Camp David in August 2023 – which China slammed as a “hypocritical anti-China pantomime” – further exacerbated the divide between South Korea and Japan on one side and China on the other.

Mr Yoon’s past remarks about the Taiwan Strait being a “global issue”, and the need to maintain the status quo, had also met with strong rebukes from Beijing.

To mend ties, South Korea dispatched Foreign Minister Cho Tae-yul on a visit to Beijing on May 13 and 14, the first in more than six years by a South Korean foreign minister. The visit is seen as a step towards normalising relations, a move that the Chinese have welcomed.

In his opening remarks at the start of a four-hour meeting with Mr Cho, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi expressed hope that bilateral relations with South Korea will develop further “without interference”.

“The difficulties and challenges facing South Korea-China relations have clearly increased. This is not in line with the mutual interests of our two countries, nor is it something that China desires,” said Mr Wang.

“It is hoped that South Korea will abide by the one-China principle, properly and prudently handle Taiwan-related issues, and consolidate the political foundation of bilateral relations,” he added.

In response, Mr Cho – a veteran diplomat who was just appointed foreign minister in January and is thus regarded to be in a good position to reset ties with China – said that South Korea attaches significance to relations with China.

He added that Seoul’s relations with China and the US are not a “zero-sum” relationship, asserting that close alignment with one country does not mean drifting away from the other.

“We hope to closely cooperate with the Chinese side to continue to develop the strategic cooperative partnership in a healthier and more mature direction,” Mr Cho was reported as saying.

“We don’t perceive foreign relations as a zero-sum relationship, nor do we manage them as such,” Mr Cho said. “I believe it’s important that not one side but both sides make efforts to carefully manage ties in a way that disagreements will not turn into conflicts for the development of bilateral relations.”

Mr Cho called for the building of bilateral trust, saying that he hoped his visit would be the “first step towards untangling the threads” between the two countries and “opening up a new avenue for cooperation”.

Both ministers agreed to continue cooperation on the upcoming South Korea-Japan-China summit, which was last held in December 2019 in Chengdu. This will be the ninth such summit.

South Korea currently holds the rotating chair of the trilateral cooperation summit. The summits were suspended following a dispute between Seoul and Tokyo over a South Korean Supreme Court ruling that Japan was liable to pay compensation for wartime forced labour, as well as the Covid-19 pandemic.

While South Korea has been hoping to restart the trilateral talks since September 2023, following a high-level diplomats’ meeting between the three countries, Beijing had been reluctant to commit to a date for the meeting till now.

With Mr Cho’s visit, it is widely expected that the trilateral meeting will proceed on May 26 and 27, though South Korean officials have yet to confirm this.

Analysts have said that while deliverables from the summit are unlikely to be substantive, the more important outcome is the resumption of dialogue, especially between South Korea and China.

Professor Lee Hee-ok, director at the Sungkyun Institute of China Studies of Sungkyunkwan University, said that China was likely softening its stance towards South Korea, given pressure from the trilateral alliance of US, Japan and South Korea, as well as “fatigue from the diplomatic conflict”.

He noted there have been too many changes to the political landscape since the last summit in 2019, with the intensification of the US-China competition, the strengthening of US, Japan and South Korean security cooperation and close ties between Seoul and Tokyo.

Speaking to the foreign media in Seoul during an engagement session on May 10, Prof Lee said: “Against this backdrop, while holding this year’s summit holds a lot of significance to all three countries, their individual positions on hot issues such as North Korea, the Taiwan Strait and the decoupling from China are all very different.”

He added that the more feasible outcomes would be in less sensitive areas, such as economic cooperation, technology exchanges and people-to-people exchanges.

The business communities of the three countries, which last met on the sidelines of the 2019 summit, are expected to resume the practice at the upcoming summit.

At a meeting with South Korean business leaders prior to his meeting with Mr Wang, Mr Cho acknowledged that economic relations between South Korea and China face risks and challenges due to increasingly fierce competition over technology.

“The Chinese economy is changing towards a technological and regional industrial structure, and the bilateral economic relationship is shifting from a once-mutually complementary partnership to a competitive one, which I think is posing a serious challenge to us,” he said, while pledging support for South Korean businessmen seeking opportunities in China.

Echoing Prof Lee’s view about dialogue was Professor Dong Xiangrong, a senior fellow at the National Institute of International Strategy at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, who told China Daily newspaper that Mr Cho’s visit had provided an opportunity to open a new phase of communication between China and South Korea.

Dr Bong Young-shik of Yonsei University in Seoul told The Straits Times that China does not stand to “lose a lot” by participating in the summit, because it is at the premier level and does not involve Chinese President Xi Jinping.

“China will also benefit from projecting the image that China is all about peace and stability in the region,” he said.

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