South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol is facing domestic criticism after he refused to meet with Nancy Pelosi during her visit to Seoul on Thursday, in what analysts said amounted to the only grudge from a host nation leader during the US House Speaker’s Asian tour. week
The last time Pelosi visited South Korea as Speaker of the House in 2015, she met with then-President Park Geun-hye and South Korea’s then-foreign minister.
But Yoon’s office said this week that he was unable to meet with Pelosi because he was on vacation, while Foreign Minister Park Jin is in Cambodia for a meeting of the Association of Southern Nations -east Asia
Yoon, who is believed to be at home in Seoul, spoke with Pelosi by phone Thursday afternoon. When Pelosi arrived in South Korea on Wednesday evening, Yoon was at the theater and then had dinner with some actors.
“I cannot understand that the parliamentary leader of our ally has visited Korea and our president does not meet her. Being on vacation cannot be an excuse,” Yoo Seung-min, a prominent former lawmaker from Yoon’s conservative People’s Power party, wrote on Facebook on Thursday.
“What can we think of the fact that he saw a play in a theater and had a social gathering [with the actors]but is he still not meeting with the Speaker of the US House?”
Yoon took office in May on a platform widely seen as more hawkish on China than that of his leftist predecessor, Moon Jae-in. But his administration has come under increasing pressure from Chinese officials in recent months over South Korea’s deepening trade and defense ties with the US.
China has launched an unprecedented series of live-fire drills around Taiwan in response to Pelosi’s visit to the island on Tuesday and Wednesday, which Beijing considers part of its sovereign territory.
Pelosi met with Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen during the visit and also met with Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong earlier in the week. He is expected to meet Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida in Tokyo on the next and final leg of the tour.
Kim Jae-chun, a professor of political science at Seoul’s Sogang University and a former adviser to Park’s conservative government, said Yoon “seems reluctant to meet Pelosi as he feels burdened by Beijing’s growing criticism of diplomatic policies and security of Seoul”.
Kim added: “This gives the wrong impression, both domestically and internationally, that he is trying to curry favor with Beijing. Pelosi is a very important figure in the United States. When the leaders of Taiwan and Japan meet her, Yoon doesn’t know her is not a good choice.”
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Yoon attended the NATO summit in Madrid in June, a first for a South Korean leader and a move widely interpreted as a sign of Seoul’s emergence as a more active US regional security ally.
“I am not convinced that we will be greatly affected by China’s complaints,” South Korean Prime Minister Han Duck-soo said while Yoon was at the NATO summit. “Our priorities in values and national interests are changing.”
But last month, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian urged South Korea to uphold Moon’s commitment not to deploy any more US Terminal Altitude Area Defense missile interceptors ( Thaad).
South Korea’s deployment of the Thaad system in 2017 prompted a sharp economic backlash from Beijing, which is seen as having contributed to a steady rise in anti-China sentiment in South Korea in recent years.
The Chinese ambassador in Seoul warned in a speech last month against the “decoupling” of the Chinese economy.
South Korean companies have moved in recent years to reduce their exposure to the Chinese market and to diversify supply chains in key sectors such as semiconductors and electric vehicle batteries.
The Financial Times reported this week that major chipmaker Samsung Electronics is reassessing its investments in China in response to so-called barriers contained in the Science and Chips Act passed by the US Congress last month.