Xi 'seriously considering' visit to Seoul

South Korean Prime Minister Han Duck-soo, left, stands alongside Chinese President Xi Jinping at their meeting on the sidelines of the opening of the 19th Asian Games in Hangzhou on Saturday afternoon. [OFFICE OF THE PRIME MINISTER]

Chinese President Xi Jinping told South Korean Prime Minister Han Duck-soo that he is “seriously considering” a visit to Seoul, a Foreign Ministry official said Saturday.

Xi raised the idea during his meeting with Han in the eastern Chinese city of Hangzhou, just before the opening ceremony for the 19th Asian Games, according to First Vice Foreign Minister Chang Ho-jin at a press briefing following the talks.

During his meeting with Han, Xi also voiced support for inter-Korean reconciliation and pledged to push for peace on the Korean Peninsula after the South Korean prime minister asked him to play a constructive role.

Han’s request follows President Yoon Suk Yeol’s call to both China and Russia to help rein in North Korea’s illicit weapons programs.

Yoon first extended an invitation to Xi to visit South Korea during their meeting on the sidelines of the Group of 20 summit in Bali, Indonesia, in November last year, but the Chinese president proposed that Yoon visit China instead.

Former President Moon Jae-in was the last South Korean leader to visit Beijing in 2017, while the Chinese president has not visited Seoul since 2014.

Xi’s latest suggestion raises the possibility that the two countries could soon undertake steps to mend relations that were badly frayed due to remarks earlier this year by Yoon and the Chinese ambassador to Seoul.

In an interview with Reuters in April, the South Korean president said he opposed the use of force by China to change the status quo regarding Taiwan, a self-governing island that Beijing claims is a renegade province.

Yoon’s comments sparked a war of words between Seoul and Beijing.

The spat worsened after Chinese Ambassador to South Korea Xing Haiming issued a veiled warning to the South Korean government about “betting against China” in its strategic competition with the United States.

Xing’s comments, which he said in the presence of Democratic Party leader Lee Jae-myung, were condemned as interference in South Korean domestic politics by the Yoon administration.

Tempers on both sides appeared to cool at a meeting between South Korean Foreign Minister Park Jin and now-Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi at a meeting held in Jakarta in July.

By meeting with the South Korean prime minister in Hangzhou, the Chinese president appeared to signal the resumption of high-level dialogue between Seoul and Beijing amid more signs of deepening military cooperation between Pyongyang and Moscow.

At a press conference held at the United Nations headquarters in New York on Saturday, Moscow’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said he will visit the North next month for discussions to follow up on the Sept. 13 summit between President Vladimir Putin and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.

In a speech given the same day at the UN General Assembly, Lavrov lambasted the United States for “whipping up hysteria on the Korean Peninsula” and named South Korea as one of the countries joining “military-political mini-alliances under [U.S.] control.”

Kim undertook a six-day trip to the Russian Far East earlier this month, visiting key Russian military facilities, including the Vostochny Cosmodrome spaceport as well as the Yuri Gagarin and Yakovlev aircraft factories.

On the same day Kim held his summit with Putin, Lavrov told Russian reporter Pavel Zarubin that the geopolitical climate had changed completely since the Security Council imposed sanctions on Pyongyang, which Moscow helped pass as a permanent veto-wielding member.

In another video posted by Zarubin on social media, the reporter asked Lavrov to comment on media reports that Kim and Putin’s summit could open the way for open trade in weapons and military technology between Russia and North Korea.

Lavrov did answer the question directly, but noted that central and eastern European members of NATO that were once part of the Warsaw Pact had broken contractual agreements by providing their Soviet-era weaponry to Ukraine.

Lavrov’s comments and upcoming visit to the North raises the specter of open Russian assistance to aid the North with its ailing economy and its pursuit of advanced weapons and technology banned by multiple UN Security Council resolutions.

While China has fiercely criticized joint security cooperation between South Korea, the United States and Japan as an attempt by Washington to create a NATO-style military bloc in East Asia, Beijing has not actively taken up Moscow’s suggestion of conducting trilateral military drills with Pyongyang.

China has also posited itself as a neutral arbiter and potential peacemaker regarding Russia's war against Ukraine in what observers say is an effort to improve relations with Europe, although U.S. intelligence has accused Beijing of aiding Moscow economically by buying Russian oil and supplying dual civilian-military use technology since the war began.

While China dispatched high-ranking officials to both military parades held by North Korea to mark the signing of the Korean War armistice on July 27 and the founding of the current regime on Sept. 9, Pyongyang’s state media coverage emphasized the North’s ties with Russia over its relationship with China.

The North has historically leveraged its ties with China and Russia to extract concessions from one country if the other proved less amenable to fulfilling its needs.

BY MICHAEL LEE [lee.junhyuk@joongang.co.kr]