Pres. Park to hold relay summits with leaders from US and China

President Park Geun-hye left the country on Sunday to attend the APEC Summit, the East Asia Summit, the ASEAN + 3 (Korea, China and Japan) Summit, and the G20 Summit. The long 9-day tour entails her multilateral summit diplomacy through visits to the three countries of China, Myanmar, and Australia, before return to home on Monday next week.

This round of summit diplomacy draws special attention, as it comes amid a situation wherein the map of security in Northeast Asia is being reshaped, with China and Japan set to hold summit for the first time in two and a half years, and the U.S. sending the Director of National Intelligence to North Korea.

On the sidelines of the APEC Summit, President Park will likely hold a Seoul-Beijing summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping on Monday and a Seoul-Washington summit with U.S. President Barack Obama on Tuesday. The summit with Xi will be her fifth with the Chinese head of state since her inauguration, and that with Obama will be her third. She has no plan to hold a summit with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.

On the occasion of the Seoul-Beijing summit, attention is focusing on whether free trade talks between South Korea and China will be concluded. The presidential office in Seoul judges that with the conclusion of South Korea-China free trade talks drawing near, delays in ratification of trade pacts with other economies could negatively influence the South Korea-China free trade agreement. At the Seoul-Washington summit, the two leaders are expected to comprehensively address pending issues, including security situation on the Korean Peninsula after another postponement of wartime operational control (OPCON) that was announced recently, ways for the two allies to collaborate to cope with the North’s nuclear treat, North Korean human rights issue, and revision to the South Korea-U.S. nuclear treaty.