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| President-elect Yoon Suk-yeol, right, and Chinese President Xi Jinping / AFP-Yonhap, Korea Times photo by Oh Dae-guen |
By Jung Da-min
President-elect Yoon Suk-yeol will have a phone conversation with Chinese President Xi Jinping this week, becoming the first president-elect to have phone talks with a Chinese leader, according to Yoon's spokeswoman Kim Eun-hye, Wednesday.
Although Kim did not specify the exact date, it is highly likely to be held Friday afternoon, according to media reports.
"It will be the first time for a president-elect to hold a phone conversation with Xi," Kim told reporters during a press briefing at the Korea Banking Institute in Seoul's Jongno District.
According to the spokeswoman, it is unprecedented for a Chinese leader to have a phone conversation with a foreign president-elect before the latter is officially sworn in as head of state.
Kim said that the two sides seem to have shared the need to jumpstart cooperation, considering the grave security circumstances facing the Korean Peninsula and East Asian region following the escalating tensions caused by North Korea's test-firing of missiles.
Yoon's phone conversation with Xi was set amid rampant speculation that South Korea-China relations may be put to the test once Yoon is sworn in on May 10. Such speculation came as Yoon played hardball on China all throughout the presidential campaign period.
Yoon made it clear that the policy priority will be on strengthening the South Korea-U.S. alliance, although he recognized China as the nation's largest trade partner.
When asked to name which leaders he would meet in order if elected, Yoon said he would meet the U.S. president first, then the Japanese leader, followed by Chinese and North Korean leaders.
Under his leadership, Yoon pledged South Korea will push for membership in the U.S.-led security partnership for the Indian-Pacific region, called Quad Plus.
The U.S. government reacted favorably to Yoon after he won the presidential election.
On March 10, just hours after Yoon was elected as the next president of South Korea, Yoon and U.S. President Joe Biden held a phone conversation, which was widely seen as a signal for the incoming Yoon administration to put more focus on strengthening the South Korea-U.S. alliance.
While Yoon has pledged to strengthen the South Korea-U.S. alliance further, there have been subtle tensions between Yoon's election camp and the Chinese government, as Yoon has pledged to strengthen the extended deterrence provided by the U.S. in favor of additional deployments of the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense system (THAAD) here in response to North Korea's growing missile threat.
China has strongly opposed South Korea's deployment of the U.S. missile shield, but Yoon had said in a JoongAng Ilbo interview in mid-July last year that China, if it wants to insist on the withdrawal of the THAAD system, then it should first withdraw the long-range radars deployed near its border.
Chinese Ambassador to Korea Xing Haiming immediately sent a contribution piece to the same paper to refute Yoon's statements, by saying the South Korea-U.S. alliance should not harm China's interests despite China's respect for Korea's foreign policy. This has led to controversy over whether China tried to intervene in the South Korean presidential election.
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