South Korea's Park set to charm China, show up the North

[ChinaToday]

(Reuters) - When the presidents of China and South Korea meet in Beijing this week, they will likely use a rapport that blossomed eight years ago to find common ground on North Korea as well as seek ways to boost already vibrant economic ties.

With her self-taught Mandarin and interest in Chinese culture, South Korea's Park Geun-hye will get a warm welcome during a four-day state visit that begins on Thursday.

"I am sure this summit will be an unprecedented honeymoon for China and South Korea," said Woo Su-keun, a South Korean professor at Donghua University in Shanghai.

The contrast between China's relationship with South Korea and its testy ties with the erratic North could not be starker.

Beijing, the closest thing North Korea has to a major ally, has grown frustrated with Pyongyang and was heavily involved in U.N. sanctions imposed for the North's third nuclear test in February. Its annual trade with North Korea is a puny $6 billion, versus $215 billion with the South.

On top of that, ordinary Chinese love South Korean fashion, pop stars and soap operas. North Korea, by contrast, is seen as a dangerous liability, and Chinese refer to leader Kim Jong-un derisively on social media as "Fatty Kim".

Helping the mood music for Park, a slightly built and elegant 61-year-old, China's relations with Japan are also in the deep freeze due to a row over disputed islands in the East China Sea.

Park's trip follows two visits by North Korean envoys to Beijing in the past month. While North Korea offered talks on its nuclear programme during those visits, experts are sceptical Pyongyang is ready to make any concessions.

North Korea will be high on the agenda when she meets Chinese President Xi Jinping, who in a telephone call in March after both leaders took office called Park "an old friend of the Chinese people and of myself", according to South Korean officials.

Both are expected to agree Pyongyang must give up its nuclear weapons. Park might also be able to use her personal chemistry with Xi - who she first met over lunch at a Chinese restaurant in Seoul in 2005 - to get China to put more pressure on Pyongyang, experts said.

"Out of frustration and scepticism over a decade of North Korea's nuclear weapons development, China is now stepping up its push for denuclearisation," said Lee Soo-hyuck, a former South Korean deputy foreign minister and its chief envoy to disarmament talks between 2003 and 2005.

However, China is highly unlikely to do anything that would cause the collapse of North Korea, which it sees as a strategic land buffer against American influence in the region.

TRADE BOOMING

Park and Xi will also focus on forging a stronger economic partnership.

The South Korean leader will take a big business delegation to China, including executives from Samsung Electronics Co Ltd and Hyundai Motor although it was unclear if any deals will be signed. Park's office expects a bilateral free trade pact under negotiation to be discussed.

China is South Korea's biggest trading partner. South Korea is also one of the few developed countries that runs a surplus with China - to the tune of $53 billion in 2012 according to Seoul - thanks to exports of cars, smartphones, flat screen TVs, semiconductors and petrochemicals.

South Korean imports to China overtook Japan last September, Singapore's DBS Bank said in a recent research note.

Hyundai and its Kia Motors affiliate are now the third biggest seller of cars in China, ahead of their Japanese rivals. Volkswagen AG and General Motors are the top two.

South Korean investment has also poured into China, exceeding $40 billion since 1988.

After meetings in Beijing, Park will visit Xi'an, an industrial city in northwestern China where Samsung, the world's top technology firm by revenue, is building a $7 billion chip complex. Hyundai has just completed its third plant in Beijing.

TIES THAT BIND

When China and North Korea sealed their relationship in blood fighting side by side in the Korean War, both were poor and isolated against the West. North Korea remains poor to this day while China is the world's second largest economy and South Korea is an industrial powerhouse.

Beijing only established diplomatic relations with South Korea in 1992, but ties have flourished since.

In 2005, when Xi was Communist Party boss of the wealthy eastern coastal province of Zhejiang, he met Park for lunch.

Xi was keen to learn about the economic New Village Movement, a rural development program in the 1970s undertaken by Park's father, military ruler Park Chung-hee who is credited with building modern South Korea.

Park, according to South Korean media reports, later gave Xi two boxes of materials that included her father's speeches on the movement and a book about South Korean economic development.

She is an admirer of Chinese culture and her favourite book is a "History of Chinese Philosophy" by philosopher Feng Youlan. She has spoken fondly of her earlier trips to China.

"President Park has a soft spot for China," the official China News Service said. "This kind of friendly public diplomacy gives a good impression to Chinese people and is extremely important."

(Additional reporting Ben Blanchard in Beijing and Megha Rajagopalan in Kuala Lumpur; Editing by Jack Kim and Dean Yates)

South Korea's Park set to charm China, show up the North | Reuters

 

[huskie]

I think Park studied in Taiwan, so her fluent Chinese should not be called 'self-taught'.

 

[That Guy]

The new leader is nothing but a spoiled brat, at least with kim Jong Il, there was some semblance of DPRK being a rational partner, but under Un, the DPRK is acting like a child.

 

[ChinaToday]

For Leaders of China and South Korea, a Meeting of ‘Old Friends’

BEIJING — President Park Geun-hye of South Korea will begin a state visit here Thursday with an elaborate banquet and a highly anticipated meeting with China’s leader, President Xi Jinping, who has called her “an old friend.”

That Ms. Park speaks Chinese and has shown an admiration for Chinese culture helps.

The contrast with the furtive, hastily arranged appearances in Beijing recently of two North Korean officials, a senior military officer and a diplomat, who were scolded by their Chinese hosts for North Korea’s growing arsenal of nuclear weapons, could not be more stark.

And Ms. Park, 61, the daughter of an anti-Communist dictator, is coming to China before the leader of North Korea, Kim Jong-un, who is supposed to be China’s ally.

At the top of the agenda for her visit, according to both sides, will be North Korea and, specifically, how South Korea and China can together push Mr. Kim toward giving up his nuclear weapons.

Few people expect concrete steps in that direction. But the symbolism of a frustrated China, which is North Korea’s benefactor, joining hands with South Korea, an allay of the United States, in calling for a Korean Peninsula free of nuclear weapons will send a clear and unpleasant message to the North, analysts say.

“When the leaders of the two countries meet reporters, they will say they have reached some consensus on denuclearization of the peninsula,” predicted Wang Junsheng, professor of Asian affairs at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.

That would be a demonstration of a new solidarity in the relationship between China and South Korea. The previous president of South Korea, Lee Myung-bak, did not have China’s support, Mr. Wang said.

Ms. Park will be arriving at a time of turmoil among China’s foreign policy specialists, who are debating whether North Korea should be considered an ally or a liability.

The constituencies in China’s hierarchy who stand by North Korea appear to be dwindling, but the People’s Liberation Army and segments of the Communist Party remain in favor of keeping North Korea on Beijing’s side, Chinese experts say.

After North Korea conducted a third nuclear test this year, China voted in favor of economic sanctions against North Korea at the United Nations. Since then, Beijing has called for the resumption of the six-party talks — involving China, Japan, Russia, the United States, South Korea and North Korea — that are aimed at ridding North Korea of its nuclear weapons.

Those talks collapsed in 2008 when North Korea walked out, and though Ms. Park has shown more warmth to China on North Korea than her predecessor, she has said she is not in favor of “talks for talks’ sake,” a position that coincides with the view in Washington.

Indeed, as a leader well regarded by President Obama — Ms. Park made her first overseas visit to Washington after assuming the presidency this year — she could well become a channel between the United States and China on North Korea, Washington experts say.

How Mr. Xi and Ms. Park could bridge the gap over possible talks with the North will probably be at the center of their discussions, said Sun Zhe, director of the Center for U.S.-China Relations at Tsinghua University in Beijing.

“The Chinese leaders will try to tell her that China is firm on denuclearization and will encourage a return to six-party talks,” Mr. Sun said. “We need to have some more joint South Korea and China efforts. Strengthening the South Korean-China relationship will send a clear message to North Korea.”

The visit will not only be about how to tame North Korea.

Ms. Park will be accompanied by scores of South Korean businesspeople, among them the titans of the companies that sell popular South Korean brands of smartphones, cars and flat-screen televisions in huge quantities to China. China is South Korea’s leading trading partner, and South Korean imports to China overtook Japan’s last September, according to the Singaporean DBS Bank.

On the eve of Mrs. Park’s arrival, The Beijing Morning Post flattered Ms. Park with a profile headlined “China Hand.” The article described how Zhao Yun, a Chinese military general of the early third century, is one of her favorite characters. She can sing Chinese songs and likes Sichuan cuisine, the profile said. Her autobiography, “Steeled by Despair, Motivated by Hope” — the first phrase is a reference to the assassination of both of her parents — sits atop the Chinese Amazon list of biographies of political figures.

Ms. Park’s personal interest in China is a reflection of the fascination with China among many South Koreans, who are visiting the country as tourists in greater numbers than the Japanese, even though Japan has had diplomatic relations with China for far longer.

More than 60,000 South Korean students studied in China last year, the largest group of foreign students, according to the Chinese Ministry of Education. There were 24,583 American students, the second-biggest group, the ministry said.

If there was some question about the personal chemistry between Mr. Xi and Mr. Obama at their summit meeting in California this month, there seems little doubt of the connection between Mr. Xi and Ms. Park.

They first met in 2005, when Mr. Xi was the Communist Party leader of Zhejiang Province on China’s coast, where South Korean companies have invested heavily. They chatted about the rural development projects started by her father, Park Chung-hee, in the 1970s, according to accounts in the South Korean news media.

So when they talked after they both assumed office in March, Mr. Xi referred to Ms. Park as “an old friend of the Chinese people and of myself,” South Korean officials said.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/27/world/asia/china-south-korea-meeting.html?_r=0

 

[idune]

In hypothetical scenario, let's say two Koreas re approached and have closer tie with China. Taiwan became another self administered region of China with foreign policy, defense and and monetary policy integrated with Mainland China. Where will US policy in east Asia and Asia Pacific be? What would Japan standing?

 

[Azazel]

In hypothetical scenario, let's say two Koreas re approached and have closer tie with China. Taiwan became another self administered region of China with foreign policy, defense and and monetary policy integrated with Mainland China. Where will US policy in east Asia and Asia Pacific be? What would Japan standing?

Still Day dreaming huh???What is the point in discussing a hypothetical scenario.
What if tomorrow an asteroid hits earth and wipes out all mankind??