Nancy Pelosi, the US House Speaker, left Taiwan on Wednesday after a contentious visit that enraged China, only to have geopolitical tensions follow her to South Korea, where the vacationing South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol refused to meet her.
President Yoon is facing criticism for refusing to meet Nancy Pelosi during her visit to Seoul on Thursday, the only snub from a host country leader during Pelosi’s Asian tour this week. Yoo Seung-min, a prominent former lawmaker from Yoon’s conservative People’s Power party, wrote in a Facebook post [See below] on Thursday, “It is incomprehensible that one member of our ally from the United States Congress visited Korea but the president did not meet.” Why doesn’t the president meet with someone of such importance when she comes to Korea? “Being on vacation is not an excuse.”
Yoon’s absence fueled speculation that he was trying to avoid further antagonizing China. Yoon “seems reluctant to meet Pelosi as he feels burdened by Beijing’s growing criticism of Seoul’s diplomatic and security policies,” according to Kim Jae-chun, a professor of political science at Sogang University in Seoul and a former adviser to Park’s conservative government. Similarly, Kim Heung-kyu, director of Ajou University’s US-China Policy Institute, told the Korea Times.“Pelosi is the number three politician in the US, and if this were in the past, the president or the foreign minister would have tried to hold talks with her, but I think that this time the government seems to have decided not to excessively politicise the issue and unnecessarily antagonise China.”
However, a presidential office official told the South China Morning Post that Yoon ‘in the first place, there was no such a plan (for Yoon’ meeting Pelosi) as the president’s vacation schedule coincides with her visit here.’
