South Korea’s new leader faces tightrope act between China ties, US alliance

Hours after Lee Jae-myung was sworn in as the president of South Korea early on Wednesday, Chinese President Xi Jinping extended a congratulatory message, emphasising that China placed “great importance” on strengthening ties with its neighbour amid an increasingly uncertain global landscape.

During his campaign, Lee pledged to repair strained ties with China and North Korea and underscored China’s role as a vital trading partner.

Analysts predicted more stable China-South Korea relations to come, saying Lee’s foreign policy would be marked by “pragmatism”, flexibility and economic urgency – a departure from former president Yoon Suk-yeol, who steered the country to align more with the United States.

However, diplomatic observers also cautioned that any improvement might be constrained by South Korea’s delicate position within two “triangles”: the China-South Korea-Japan dynamic and the South Korea-Japan-US alliance.

They said his ambition to maintain a balanced approach between Beijing and Washington would still be tested.

Da Zhigang, researcher at the Institute of Northeast Asian Studies at the Heilongjiang Provincial Academy of Social Sciences, said Lee was likely to seek a more “balanced and flexible” approach to China that pursued South Korean domestic interests, compared with Yoon’s more ideological and nationalistic approach.

South China Morning Post