By Yi Whan-woo
All South Korea can do is just wait and see as U.S. President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping deal with North Korea issues in their first summit today.
Their talks will influence the country’s security interests for years to come, but there is not much Seoul can do.
South Korea has failed to raise its voice ahead of the crucial summit — its corruption-ridden president was removed from office in early March and the acting president is not on a par with foreign leaders.
Trump made the headlines in South Korean newspapers when he told the Financial Times, Monday, that he will deal with North Korea’s nuclear and ballistic missile threats with or without China’s help.
The media quoted him as saying, “That’s going to be my responsibility,” concerning Pyongyang, and that North Korean leader Kim Jong-un “is not doing the right thing” during a joint press conference with Jordanian King Abdullah II bin Al-Hussein at the White House, Wednesday.
The White House response to possible action to be taken on Beijing’s retaliation against Seoul over the deployment of a Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) in South Korea was also discussed in the South Korean diplomatic circle.
“The United States will always act to defend our allies...There will be no move away from protecting our South Korean allies and the United States,” a senior White House official said, Wednesday, during a background briefing on Xi’s U.S. visit.
The South Korean media also wondered why Trump had a telephone conversation with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Thursday, but not with acting President and Prime Minister Hwang Kyo-ahn, over Pyongyang’s ballistic missile test on the eve of the U.S.-China summit.
Such a reaction was due to the outgoing South Korean government losing all dialogue channels with the North after taking a hard-line stance.
Seoul’s relations with Beijing have also deteriorated over the THAAD deployment and its attempt to placate China on its own has so far been unsuccessful.
“The issues of North Korea and THAAD are something that Seoul and Washington should have jointly coordinated before Trump’s meeting with Xi,” said Park Won-gon, an international relations professor at Handong Global University. “But to the best of my knowledge there was no such coordination, and Trump is likely to deal with the issues with no consideration of South Korea’s view.”
Park said South Korea being excluded from the U.S. policies on the North may last “for the time being.”
He noted Trump has had trouble in filling key State Department posts that are related to issues on the peninsula. The professor also said it will take time for the upcoming South Korean government to fine tune its security affairs with the U.S.
A Ministry of Foreign Affairs official, however, said the two allies “have kept in close touch” with each other concerning the summit.