South Korean President Might Have Avoided Meeting Pelosi Not to Irk China - Media

Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi has described Pelosi’s visit as “farce” and “treachery to the international community.” He has accused the Biden administration of using “Taiwan separatist forces” to “contain” Beijing’s growing global influence.

South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol has spoken to US House of Representatives’ Speaker Nancy Pelosi by phone rather than holding a face-to-face meeting during the American official's ongoing visit to the country, the Presidential office has said.

According to a South Korean officials cited by state-backed Yonhap News Agency, Yoon is on a “summer vacation”.

During their call, Yoon and Pelosi expressed their commitment to the “denuclearization” of the Korean peninsula.

Observers have said that the South Korean leader might be avoiding a meeting with Pelosi so to not “antagonize” China, the country’s biggest trading partner.

“Pelosi is the number three politician in the US, and if this were in the past, the president or the foreign minister would have tried to hold talks with her, but I think that this time the government seems to have decided not to excessively politicize the issue and unnecessarily antagonize China,” Kim Heung-kyu, the director of the US-China Policy Institute at South Korea-based Ajou University, told the Korea Times.

A South Korean journalist has described Yoon’s decision as a "bit odd" and a snub to Pelosi.

Raphael Rashid, a Seoul-based reporter, tweeted a picture of the South Korean President going out for drinks with some local actors on Wednesday evening, as he wondered if Yoon was “too busy” to meet Pelosi.

Besides Yoon, Pelosi is also not scheduled to hold any meeting with South Korean foreign minister Park Jin, who flew to the Cambodian capital Phnom Penh on Wednesday to attend the multilateral engagements with the Southeast Asian nations and other partners within the framework of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).

As part of his engagements in Phnom Penh, Park participated in the ASEAN+3 (Japan, South Korea and China) foreign ministers’ meeting on Thursday.

South Korean Parliament Speaker Kim Jin Pyo is the highest-level official to have met Pelosi during her visit, which is part of her multi-nation trip to the Asia-Pacific region.

A joint statement released after the meeting between two speakers expressed support for efforts towards “denuclearization and peace through international cooperation and diplomatic dialogue.”

A previously unannounced stopover in Taiwan on August 2 before Pelosi arrived in Seoul on Wednesday has sparked a strong reaction from Beijing, which launched “live-fire” and ballistic missile drills in six regions around Taiwan, which will start Thursday. These drills are the largest-ever joint combat exercise conducted by Beijing in the Taiwan Strait to date, as per Chinese state media experts.

As part of the ongoing combat drills, the People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) Eastern Theatre Command said on Thursday it carried out “precision strikes” on targets located at Taiwan’s eastern front.

The PLA has said that “joint blockade, sea assault, land attack and air combat drills are at the core of the combat drills,” which will conclude on Sunday.

They announced Thursday that they will support efforts to achieve the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula amid rising tensions with Pyongyang.

"On the basis of a powerful and extended deterrence against North Korea that the people can recognize, we agree to support both governments' efforts toward denuclearization and peace through international cooperation and diplomatic dialogue," they said in a joint statement following their meeting in Seoul.