By Kyu-seok Shim and Heejin Kim<\/p>\n
SEOUL, Aug 19 (Reuters) – Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi arrived in Seoul on Wednesday for talks with South Korean officials, media reported, after Seoul \u200cand Washington scaled back joint military drills with U.S. President Donald Trump saying he wanted \u200cto revive diplomacy with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.<\/p>\n
Wang kicked off talks with counterpart Cho Hyun soon after his arrival, the \u200bYonhap News Agency reported, with the South Korean foreign minister telling Parliament earlier in the day that they would discuss Korean Peninsula issues, including recent developments surrounding the military exercises.<\/p>\n
Trump said he ordered the changes to the military exercises because of his “very good relationship” with Kim, signalling willingness to meet the North Korean leader \u200cagain.<\/p>\n
China, North Korea’s only formal treaty \u2060ally, has not commented directly on Trump’s remarks, but Wang said in Seoul that Washington should change its “hostile policy” towards Pyongyang, South Korea’s Yonhap said.<\/p>\n
Earlier on Wednesday, \u2060Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lin Jian said at a regular news briefing, when asked about Trump’s intervention to cut short the U.S.-South Korean military drills: “Maintaining peace and stability on the Korean Peninsula and promoting the political settlement \u200bof the \u200bKorean Peninsula issue is in the common interests of \u200ball parties.”<\/p>\n
SOUTH KOREA PURSUING LEE-XI SUMMIT<\/p>\n
On Thursday, \u200cWang is scheduled to meet President Lee Jae Myung. He will also hold talks and a luncheon with National Security Adviser Wi Sung-lac, according to the presidential office.<\/p>\n
Cho also told Parliament that the Foreign Ministry was pursuing a summit between Lee and Chinese President Xi Jinping on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Shenzhen later this year.<\/p>\n
Lee has proposed multilateral talks involving parties to the 1950-53 Korean \u200cWar on ways to establish a lasting peace on \u200bthe peninsula and is expected to attend the APEC summit in Shenzhen \u200bin November.<\/p>\n
China is South Korea’s “most important neighbouring \u200bcountry,” Wang Yi said in his opening remarks at the summit with Cho, \u200cadding Beijing would “make efforts that we rightfully should,” \u200baccording to Yonhap.<\/p>\n
“We also hope \u200bthat South Korea and North Korea can gradually pursue opportunities for peace and coexistence, and we sincerely wish for lasting stability and development on the Korean Peninsula,” Wang said, Yonhap reported.<\/p>\n
Cho \u200bsaid that he wishes that achievements \u200cfrom restoring relations between South Korea and China would contribute to the regional peace and \u200bstability, including the Korean Peninsula, Yonhap said.<\/p>\n
(Reporting by Kyu-seok Shim in Seoul and Ethan \u200bWang in BeijingEditing by Ed Davies and Saad Sayeed)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Kyu-seok Shim and Heejin Kim SEOUL, Aug 19 (Reuters) – Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi arrived in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":124849,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[10442,10614,31,5280,34,177,2642,1484,35291,1257,1235],"class_list":["post-124848","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-korea","tag-chinese-foreign-minister","tag-cho-hyun","tag-korea","tag-korean-peninsula","tag-north-korea","tag-north-korean-leader","tag-president-donald-trump","tag-south-korean","tag-south-korean-foreign-minister","tag-wang-yi","tag-yonhap-news-agency"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/124848","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=124848"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/124848\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/124849"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=124848"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=124848"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=124848"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}