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South Korean Foreign Minister Kang Kyung-wha at Incheon International Airport before her departure for Berlin on Aug. 9. (Yonhap News)

South Korean Foreign Minister Kang Kyung-wha has departed on her first trip overseas since COVID-19 spread around the world at the end of February, fanning curiosity about the reason for her three-day trip.

Officials at South Korea’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs explained on Aug. 10 that Kang had departed from Incheon International Airport the previous day for a meeting with German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas in Berlin. Their meeting represented the second round of strategic dialogue between the two countries. Following the meeting, Kang is planning to return home on the afternoon of Aug. 11.

Since South Korea and Germany don’t have any bilateral issues that urgently require in-person diplomacy, it’s very unusual for Kang to undertake such a rigorous trip, requiring her to spend the night aboard the plane. This has fueled speculation that Kang headed to Germany in a bid to persuade Berlin to yield in its opposition to US President Donald Trump’s proposal for an expanded framework for the G7 summit that would include South Korea.

Maas commented on that issue during an interview with the German press at the end of July. According to Maas, the current G7 and G20 have been very carefully calibrated, and there’s no need to augment the G7 with Russia, South Korea, and other countries to make it a G11 or G12. Maas explained that Germany was opposed to allowing Russia to join the G7 because it had provoked a crisis in Ukraine with its forcible annexation of the Crimean Peninsula in March 2014.

Since 2018, German Chancellor Angela Merkel has been at loggerheads with Trump, who has chided the US’ NATO allies for not boosting their defense budgets. Their relationship grew even chillier when Trump decided at the end of last month to pull 12,000 American troops out of Germany.

Foreign newspapers have reported that Merkel is very uncomfortable with Trump’s attempts to use the G7 summit to pursue the containment of China or to promote his accomplishments leading up to the US presidential election. That makes it unlikely that Kang’s diplomatic efforts will bear fruit, despite her grueling trip amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

By Gil Yun-hyung, staff writer

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