Chinese ambassador in hot water over 'political interference'

Chinese Ambassador to Korea Xing Haiming shakes hands with main opposition People Power Party (PPP) leader Lee Jun-seok during a courtesy visit to Lee at the National Assembly in Seoul, July 12. Korea Times photo by Oh Dae-geun

Experts describe Xing's response as 'inappropriate'

By Jung Da-min

Chinese Ambassador to Korea Xing Haiming has come under fire for publicly criticizing a presidential hopeful's diplomacy strategy that seeks to strengthen the Korea-U.S. alliance.

Former Prosecutor General Yoon Seok-youl / Yonhap

Former Prosecutor General Yoon Seok-youl, a strong presidential hopeful of the opposition bloc, said Thursday in his interview with the JoongAng Ilbo that he believed Korea's diplomacy strategy should be based on the solid foundation of the Korea-U.S. alliance and that Seoul should seek a horizontal relationship with China based on that.

"Based on the solid foundation of the Korea-U.S. alliance, we need to strengthen cooperative relations with countries that share common values," Yoon said. "Establishing horizontal relations with China is possible only through this framework of international cooperation."

When asked about the thorny issue of a Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) U.S. missile shield in Korea, deployed in 2016 despite China's strong protest, Yoon said the matter was clearly in the area of South Korea's sovereignty. Yoon continued on to say, "If [China] wants to insist on withdrawing the deployment of THAAD, it should first withdraw the long-range radars deployed near its borders."

Regarding Yoon's interview, Xing immediately sent a contribution piece to the same paper, the following day, to refute the presidential hopeful's statements.

"China respects Korea's foreign policy. However, the Korea-U.S. alliance should not harm China's interests," Xing said. "Sino-Korea relations are by no means an accessory to Korea-U.S. relations, and the development of bilateral relations [between China and Korea] should not be influenced by other factors."

Xing continued to criticize Korea for having given permission to deploy the U.S.'s THAAD shield, saying it seriously undermined China's security interests and that it made Chinese people feel insecure. He added, "I don't understand why Yoon mentioned the Chinese radar in the interview, as I never heard from my Korean friends that they see it as a threat to Korea."

Xing's contribution piece has brought backlash among politicians and diplomatic experts.

Rep. Park Jin, a presidential hopeful of the conservative main opposition People Power Party (PPP) and member of the National Assembly's Foreign Affairs and Unification Committee, said Xing's public rebuttal of Yoon's diplomacy strategy was not appropriate as an ambassador.

"Ambassador Xing Haiming's response, regardless of the content, is a disrespect to diplomatic customs," Park wrote on Facebook, Friday. "It is a clear violation of the sovereignty of an embassy's host country for its ambassador to respond to the foreign and security policies of a strong presidential hopeful in this way so as to promote the position of his own country. Xing's act must be criticized as it raises the question of whether or not China has some intention to interfere in Korea's presidential election."

Kim Jun-seok, a politics and diplomacy professor at Dongguk University, said Xing's public criticism of Yoon was inappropriate when the counterpart of the Chinese ambassador should be the Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the government, not an individual politician.

"Even though Yoon is a presidential hopeful with a high approval rating, he currently does not have any official title. It is very inappropriate for the Chinese ambassador to refute Yoon's stance through a contribution piece to the media," Kim said.

Shin Beom-chul, director of the Center for Diplomacy and Security at the Korea Research Institute for National Strategy, said, "Ambassador Xing Haiming's contribution piece could be seen as an attempt by a foreign ambassador to intervene in Korean politics."

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