G20 Summit Can Park persuade Xi on THAAD?
President Park Geun-hye and Chinese President Xi Jinping shake hands on the opening day of the two-day G20 summit at Hangzhou International Exhibition Center, Sunday. The two leaders will hold a bilateral summit today on North Korea’s nuclear program and South Korea’s plan to allow the deployment of a U.S. anti-missile system. / Yonhap
By Kang Seung-woo
HANGZHOU, China ― President Park Geun-hye will seek to narrow the gap with Chinese President Xi Jinping over the deployment of a U.S. anti-missile system on Korean soil when they meet Monday on the sidelines of the G20 summit, Cheong Wa Dae officials said Sunday.
She will stress the inevitability of the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system on the Korean Peninsula as a defensive means against North Korea’s growing nuclear and missile threats, they said.
There are calls for Park to use the upcoming meeting to ease complaints from China due to concerns that the country may become reluctant to faithfully enforce the latest set of United Nations Security Council sanctions against Pyongyang.
The sanctions were imposed in March in response to the repressive state’s nuclear test in January and long-range rocket launch the following month.
South Korea has stressed that the envisioned deployment is inevitable to protect against North Korea’s growing nuclear and missile threats, but China claims that the THAAD presence would undermine its security interests.
“North Korea’ nuclear and missile issues are a matter of life and death to us,” Park said during a joint press conference following her summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin in the eastern Russian city of Vladivostok on Saturday. Russia is also voicing objections to THAAD, but Putin did not clarify his opposition in the press conference.
However, Xi is not likely to follow suit, given his recent remarks on the issue.
In a speech to a business forum being held alongside the G20, Saturday, he stressed that the world should dismiss the “Cold War-like mentality of the bygone era,” which seems to clarify his opposition to the THAD deployment.
During his bilateral talks with U.S. President Barack Obama on the same day, he told his American counterpart that China is opposed to the THAAD presence in South Korea, asking the United States to respect China’s strategic security interests, according to the state-run Chinese Xinhua news agency.
In order to convince the Chinese side during the summit, President Park may mention a conditional THAAD deployment again.
She said in an interview with Russia’s Rossiya Segodnya, released on Friday, that if North Korea’s nuclear and missile threats were eliminated, the need to deploy the THAAD system would naturally disappear.
“President Park is expected to make it clear that the planned deployment of THAAD will not target any country other than North Korea, while referring to the conditional THAAD deployment again,” said Park Won-gon, a professor at Handong Global University.
While seeking understanding over the THAAD issue, Park is expected to urge China to play an aggressive role in North Korea’s denuclearization, given that Beijing is the only country to exert influence on the North thanks to its status as the country’s chief diplomatic protector and economic benefactor.
Since the U.N. sanctions, the Kim Jong-un regime has stoked tensions on the Korean Peninsula, firing ballistic missiles on 19 occasions, including submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs). In addition, it is expected to carry out a fifth nuclear test in the near future.
Along with a meeting with Xi, Park plans to hold summits today with her counterparts from Saudi Arabia and Italy.