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Minjoo Party lawmaker Park Byeong-seok enters a room at the National Assembly in Seoul for a party leaders’ meeting

President Moon Jae-in has decided to send a government delegation led by Minjoo Party lawmaker Park Byeong-seok to China’s Belt and Road Summit. The envoy’s visit to China signals the restoration of South Korea and China’s diplomatic channels, which had been all but severed by the dispute over the THAAD missile defense system.

“The envoy is being sent in line with a request made by Chinese President Xi Jinping during a phone call with President Moon Jae-in yesterday,” said Yoon Young-chan, Senior Secretary to the President for Public Relations, during a press briefing at the Blue House on May 12. Previously, China had not invited South Korea to the forum because of the impeachment and the THAAD dispute.

“Park Byeong-seok has nothing to do with the special enjoys who will be sent to the US, China, Japan, Russia and possibly other countries,” Yoon said. Yoon’s remarks dismissed claims that Park was one of the special envoys and made clear that the purpose of the delegation’s visit to China was to attend the forum. Since China has been concentrating all its diplomatic resources on this forum during the first half of 2017, the invitation sends a message that the two countries should set aside some of their diplomatic baggage. China’s Belt and Road initiative is a massive logistics and construction project designed to link Eurasia and Africa by land and by sea. The project was proposed by Chinese President Xi Jinping in 2013.

The delegation is planning to travel to China on May 13 and to attend the opening ceremony and the high-ranking plenary session on the morning on May 14. Park, who will be attending as the delegation head, was a foreign correspondent to Hong Kong for the Joongang Ilbo newspaper. He is the chair of the National Assembly’s South Korea-China conference and is one of the National Assembly’s best known “China hands.”

The government delegation’s visit appears to be paving the way to improve relations between South Korea and China, which have been strained since July 2016, when Seoul and Washington decided to deploy THAAD in South Korea. “The fact that China invited a South Korean delegation to the Belt and Road forum, which is one of Beijing’s top priorities, is a clear sign of improving relations,” said Kim Heung-gyu, director of the China Policy Center at Ajou University. “Rather than taking rash action, there’s still time to make a cautious approach with an organized strategy while closely following developments.”

Since South Korea and the US began considering the idea of deploying THAAD in South Korea in Feb. 2016, Seoul and Beijing have repeatedly confirmed their difference of opinion. During the meeting of the foreign ministers of South Korea, China and Japan in Tokyo in Aug. 2016 and during the G-20 summit in Hangzhou, China, in Sep. 2016 (attended by former president Park Geun-hye), China underlined its opposition to THAAD. Even as the Lotte Group and the tourism and media industries suffered major losses because of China’s retaliatory measures, intergovernmental deliberation failed to gain any traction.

China’s backlash reached its greatest intensity this past February, when some of the THAAD components reached South Korea and the deployment began. Deputy Prime Minister for Economic Affairs Yoo Il-ho proposed bilateral meetings with China during the G-20 finance ministers’ meeting in March and the G-20 central bank presidents’ meeting in April, but these proposals were basically rebuffed. Yoo had also hoped to meet with the finance ministers of China and Japan in Yokohama, Japan, on May 9, but the meeting did not take place.

By Kim Ji-eun, staff reporter and Kim Oi-hyun, Beijing correspondent

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