As Korea's president, Lee Jae-myung, making a state visit to China for the first time in about eight years, began a summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping.
According to the Blue House on the 5th, after completing an official welcome ceremony at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing that afternoon, President Lee began the summit with President Xi at about 4:50 p.m. (local time).
At the summit, the two leaders will sign more than 10 memorandums of understanding (MOUs) to expand exchanges in areas such as the economy, industry, climate, and transportation. Regarding expanding economic exchanges, President Lee said in the morning, "Korea-China trade has been stagnant at around $300 billion, so opening new markets is essential," and noted that economic cooperation should be expanded beyond manufacturing to technology cooperation in consumer goods and artificial intelligence (AI), as well as the content and culture sectors.
The issue of structures in the Yellow Sea is also expected to be discussed at the talks. Earlier, the two leaders exchanged views at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in Gyeongju in Nov. last year on large steel structures that China installed without authorization in the Korea-China provisional measures zone (PMG) in the Yellow Sea, and working-level consultations are underway.
Another key agenda item, the "Korean Wave restriction order (限韓令)," is also expected to be on the table. On this, China has consistently maintained that "the restriction order does not exist," but since Korea's deployment of the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system in 2016, Korea's cultural content industry has effectively faced restrictions on entering the Chinese market for 10 years. For this reason, the culture and content industry has been raising calls to ease the restriction order.
Regarding the recently resurfaced cross-strait (China and Taiwan) issue, the Korean side plans to maintain a stance of respecting the "one China" principle. At the same time, on the "nuclear-powered submarine" issue, which China has bristled at, the Korean government plans to invoke "responding to security threats" for peace on the Korean Peninsula as its justification.
Earlier, President Lee arrived in Beijing on the afternoon of the 4th, held a dinner and meeting with Korean compatriots in China, and attended the Korea-China business forum held at Diaoyutai in the morning. About 600 figures from the political and business circles of both countries attended the forum. President Lee mentioned cultural and economic exchanges and technology cooperation, and He Lifeng, China State Council vice premier in charge of the economy, also proposed actively promoting the advancement of bilateral economic and trade cooperation.