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China is openly refuting criticism from the South Korean government for agreeing to North Korean leader Kim Jong-il’s visit.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu said during a regular briefing Thursday that the matter of deciding which foreign leaders are accepted for diplomatic visits is an internal Chinese matter and remains within the scope of sovereignty. This was in response to a question regarding protests by the some members of the South Korean government over China’s decision to allow the visit while the matter of the sinking of the Cheonan is still pending. This is an unusually strong statement coming at a time when China still has yet to officially confirm Kim’s visit. Jiang said Kim’s visit and the sinking of the Cheonan are two separate issues, and that as far as she has heard, there has been no official protest from the South Korean side.

The Huanqiu Shibao, a weekly magazine on world events published by the Chinese Communist Party’s People’s Daily, opened fire in a long piece Thursday quoting analysis by experts, saying that South Korea is thoughtlessly making an array of statements about Chinese foreign policy and has gone so far as to summon the Chinese ambassador to put pressure on him, but it makes no sense to criticize China for Kim’s visit. As the state media in China is strongly controlled by the Communist Party and government, the article could be interpreted as China’s refutation of South Korea’s unusual protests.

A researcher at the Liaoning Academy of Social Sciences told the paper that Kim’s visit was scheduled earlier and had nothing to do with the sinking of the Cheonan, and that it was childish for the South Korean government to hope for China to pass judgment on the Cheonan. Another researcher at the China Institute of International Studies said he could understand South Korea’s discomfort with Kim’s visit, but it is inappropriate to react this strongly.

In response to inter-Korean issues, the Seoul and Pyongyang correspondent of the People’s Daily also stressed that China’s goal was to resolve the clash and resistance on the Korean Peninsula in a peaceful manner through dialogue, expressing indirectly concern about the heightened tensions on the Korean Peninsula.

Meanwhile, Cheong Wa Dae (the presidential office in South Korea or Blue House) spokesman Park Sun-kyoo said during a briefing Thursday about the diplomatic tensions between South Korea and China over Kim’s visit that there are no tensions or fissures between Beijing and Seoul.

Please direct questions or comments to [englishhani@hani.co.kr]