South Korean president to visit China in December

Bloomberg

South Korean President Moon Jae-in will visit China for a summit in December, his office said, with tensions over North Korea’s nuclear weapons programme high on the agenda.
The agreement was disclosed as Moon and Chinese President Xi Jinping met on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Danang, Vietnam. In a sign that tensions remain between Tokyo and Beijing over their wartime history and territorial disputes, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe proposed the visit for his own meeting with Xi, but didn’t receive an invitation.
Abe didn’t hold a meeting with Moon at APEC, and Seoul and Tokyo have their own issues over history and territory. Such frictions could complicate efforts to get a united push for the regime in North Korea to abandon its nuclear weapons and missiles.
Still, Moon’s planned visit to China coincides with an improvement in relations after the nations agreed to put aside a dispute over the deployment of a US missile shield on South Korean soil. China earlier had protested the installation of the system known as Thaad—which Seoul insists is for defensive purposes only against Pyongyang—and taken steps to punish it economically.
The nuclear ambitions of North Korea will likely top the agenda of a Moon-Xi meeting. Both have urged caution and dialogue as US President Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un engage in an escalating war of words.
In a speech to business leaders at the summit, Trump called on governments in the region to unite against Kim and “not be held hostage to a dictator’s twisted fantasies of violent conquest and nuclear blackmail.”
China and South Korea have agreed to restore bilateral relations to a “normal development path swiftly,” the foreign ministry in Seoul said in a statement. But Japan, whose relations with both neighbours have often been fraught, appeared to make little progress towards its hopes of hosting a trilateral summit by the end of the year.
“We hope that South Korea will properly match its words with actions,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said, noting that South Korea had agreed not to make further deployments of the missile shield. “We hope that the two sides can work together to put the two countries’ ties on a normal track of development at an early date.” Better relations with China will help the nation withstand potential rough economic conditions next year, South Korean Vice Finance Minister Ko Hyoung-kwon told.
Economic Ties
China is South Korea’s largest trading partner, buying about a quarter of the country’s exports. The deployment of Thaad has contributed to a 0.4 percentage point drop in South Korea’s gross domestic product growth in 2017, according to Bank of Korea estimates, preventing it from growing at the fastest pace since 2011.
Abe and Xi smiled and nodded during the opening remarks of their own meeting, which Abe later described as frank, relaxed and friendly. But his proposal that they pay mutual visits next year was met only with references to the importance of high-level exchanges, he told reporters.