China's publicity chief Liu Qibao (L) speaks with South Korea's parliament speaker Chung Ui-hwa. [Photo by Namgung Jinwoong = timeid@]
China's publicity chief Liu Qibao held a sensitive discussion with South Korea's foreign minister Monday on how to implement tough sanctions aimed at curbing North Korea's defiant nuclear and ballistic missile programs.
The meeting between Liu and South Korean Foreign Minister Yoon Byung-se over a lunch covered a range of issues including diplomatic, cultural and trade relations between the two countries as well as North Korea, Yoon's office said.
They reached a consensus that Seoul and Beijing should faithfully implement a UN resolution calling for tough sanctions against Pyongyang while discussing the security situation in Northeast Asia following North Korea's party congress this month, it said.
Liu and Yoon called for strategic diplomatic cooperation and close communication in handling North Korea's nuclear program, the ministry said, adding they also agreed to work for more active cultural and personal exchanges.
The meeting was part of Liu's four-day visit to South Korea that came at a sensitive time when Seoul and Beijing are at odds over the proposed deployment of a US missile defense system in South Korea. Before wrapping up his visit on Monday, Liu also met with South Korea's parliament speaker Chung Ui-hwa.
Alarmed by Pyongyang's dauntless push for nuclear and missile programs, US troops stationed in South Korea are trying to bring in the Terminal High-Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system.
The THAAD row comes as South Korea seeks to balance the strategic priorities of its main military ally, the United States, against those of its biggest trade partner, China.
Washington insists the THAAD system is a deterrent necessitated by the North's advancing ballistic missile program. China and Russia argue it will undermine stability and could trigger an arms race in a delicately balanced region.
Liu, a Politburo member of China's Communist Party who heads the Central Committee's Publicity Department, is seen by outsiders as one of China's promising next leaders, and analysts said his visit to South Korea is part of a diplomatic push to expand and strengthen China's "public diplomacy".
"Liu's visit, which comes at a sensitive time in Northeast Asia, illustrates China's emphasis on South Korea," Kim Heung-kyu, director of Ajou University's China Policy Institute, said.
"Through Liu, a leading player in public diplomacy, China is trying to show that it will adopt a forward-looking policy on issues related to the Korean peninsula," he said.
Kim Han-kwon, a professor at the Korea National Diplomatic Academy, a think-tank, said China is taking a different approach in relations with South Korea to set up a channel of communication and exchanges between their power brokers.
"Liu's visit to South Korea carries such an intention," he said, pointing to China's strong push to expand its public diplomacy amid an unabated territorial row with Japan, Kim said.
China and Russia are North Korea's only significant diplomatic protectors, although both have signaled growing impatience with Pyongyang's refusal to rein in its nuclear weapons program.
Aju News Lim Chang-won = cwlim34@ajunews.com
reporter
Park Sae-jin
swatchsjp@ajunews.com
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