SEOUL, July 3: China’s president flew to Seoul today for a state visit focused on nuclear developments in North Korea, which has spent the past week playing hawk and dove with threats, missile tests and peace offers.
It will be Xi Jinping’s first trip as head of state to the perennially volatile Korean peninsula, and his second summit with South Korean President Park Geun-Hye who visited China last year.
North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un is still waiting for an invitation to Beijing — a perceived snub that speaks to the strained relationship between Pyongyang and its historic and most important ally.
“No previous Chinese leader has put South Korea before and above the North like this,” said Aidan Foster-Carter a Korea expert at Leeds University.
In what some saw as a display of pique at Xi’s visit, North Korea conducted a series of rocket and missile launches into the Sea of Japan (East Sea) over the past week, triggering protests from Seoul and Tokyo.
The North has been in particularly mercurial rhetorical form of late, one day threatening a “devastating strike” against the South and the next proposing a suspension of all hostile military activities.
South Korea on Tuesday rejected the peace offer as “nonsensical” and suggested that Pyongyang show its sincerity by dumping its nuclear weapons.
Xi and Park will hold their summit after today’s official welcoming ceremony, and the two leaders are then expected to sign a joint communique.
Seoul will be hoping for a strong statement on North Korea’s nuclear weapons programme, but analysts said Beijing was unlikely to up the rhetorical ante by any significant degree.
“That would go against China’s traditional diplomatic pattern,” said Kim Joon-Hyung, professor of politics at Handong Global University.
“Xi will probably keep to the general line of urging the denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula, rather than criticising the North directly,” Kim added.
As the North’s diplomatic protector and chief economic benefactor, China has repeatedly been pressured by the international community to use its leverage to rein in Pyongyang’s nuclear ambitions.
But while Beijing has become increasingly frustrated with the North’s missile and nuclear tests, it remains wary of penalising the isolated state too heavily. (AGENCIES)
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