South Korean President Denies Pushing Against Communist China

According to a Washington Times report on July 3, South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol said that his NATO summit trip should not be interpreted as firing against Beijing.

In the new strategic thinking adopted at the Madrid summit, NATO leaders for the first time referred to the Communist China as a “systemic challenge” to NATO, and strongly criticized the warming of relations between the Communist China and Russia.

Yoon Suk-yeol attending the NATO summit as an “observer”, including brief tripartite talks with President Biden and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, triggered an angry response from the Chinese Communist Party accusing NATO of trying to expand its military influence to Asia and curb the rise of the Communist China.

Yoon Suk-yeol, who has been in office for less than two months, talked about strengthening military ties with Washington in the face of an increasingly hostile North Korea, but he also took care not to irritate the Communist China, Seoul’s largest trading partner.

Yoon Suk-yeol told the Korea Times on the presidential plane back to South Korea on Friday, “Regarding the trilateral meeting or the NATO summit, it is not about excluding a certain country”. In addition, he also told Korea Times: “Whenever we are dealing with domestic issues or international agendas, we should pursue a common value and protect rules that everyone should follow.” This week, according to a new global poll by the Pew Research Center, South Koreans’ negative views of the Communist China have surged, currently reaching 80%, a record high, which makes Yoon Suk-yeol even more unstable if he wants to walk a tightrope in diplomacy.

About 54% of South Koreans believe that the CCP’s attempt to interfere in South Korea’s domestic politics is a “very serious problem.”