SEOUL, South Korea(National times)- South Korea\u2019s new president will host leaders from 20 countries for the upcoming Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit, where the American and Chinese leaders are set to hold a high-stakes meeting on the sidelines. The two-day annual APEC summit, which opens in Gyeongju on Friday, is likely to test Lee Jae Myung\u2019s diplomatic abilities as he faces tough foreign policy challenges. Lee, in office less than five months, seeks to get along with friends and rivals alike with his self-proclaimed \u201cpragmatic diplomacy.\u201d But prospects for greater cooperation with Washington and Tokyo are in doubt due to Trump\u2019s tariff war and the election of a new ultraconservative leader in Japan. Tensions with North Korea remain high after Pyongyang snubbed Lee\u2019s overture and bolstered ties with Russia and China instead. In Gyeongju, Lee is expected to hold one-on-one meetings with U.S President Donald Trump, Chinese President Xi Jinping and new Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi, while presiding over APEC events. Experts say the summit may offer positive optics for Lee, but it doesn\u2019t guarantee long-term diplomatic success. This year\u2019s APEC summit, the first in South Korea in 20 years, is overshadowed by Thursday\u2019s Trump-Xi meeting, whose results are expected to have a major impact on the global economy. Trump will likely skip APEC\u2019s main conference, but experts say Lee could still align with other countries to promote free trade and multilateralism. South Korean officials say they\u2019ve been holding ministerial-level communications with other countries to prod all 21 to issue a joint declaration at the end of the summit in an effort not to repeat the failure to reach one in 2018 in Papua New Guinea due to U.S.-China discord over trade. \u201cOf course, there are some lingering issues, but many have been resolved. We\u2019re making efforts toward the adoption of a \u2018Gyeongju Declaration\u2019 and acting as a mediator between the U.S. and China,\u201d South Korea\u2019s national security director Wi Sung-lac told local broadcaster KBS on Sunday. Top South Korean officials have been recently flying in and out of Washington to finalize a trade agreement with the U.S., but it\u2019s unclear if the two countries can strike one in time for the APEC summit. South Korea\u2019s trade minister, Kim Jung-Kwan, told lawmakers Friday that Washington and Seoul remain \u201csharply divided\u201d over how much of South Korea\u2019s promised $350 billion U.S. investment package should be provided as direct cash payments under a July deal aimed at averting the Trump administration\u2019s highest tariffs. There are also worries that South Korea\u2019s ties with Japan could turn sour because of the recent inauguration of Japan\u2019s Takaichi, who has right-wing views on her country\u2019s wartime aggressions. Relations between the Asian neighbors and their trilateral military cooperation with the U.S. have improved in recent years. But Seoul-Tokyo ties previously experienced on-again, off-again setbacks due to grievances stemming from Japan\u2019s past colonial rule of the Korean Peninsula. There are also questions about whether a trilateral Seoul-Tokyo-Washington partnership would continue to grow amid Trump\u2019s \u201cAmerica first\u201d policy. Kim Tae-hyung, a professor at Seoul\u2019s Soongsil University, said Seoul and Tokyo are more likely to continue to tighten cooperation as they both struggle to deal with Trump\u2019s unilateral push to reset the global trade order and American security commitments to them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
SEOUL, South Korea(National times)- South Korea\u2019s new president will host leaders from 20 countries for the upcoming Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit, where the American and Chinese leaders are set to hold a high-stakes meeting on the sidelines. The two-day annual APEC summit, which opens in Gyeongju on Friday, is likely to test Lee Jae Myung\u2019s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":114740,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-114739","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-international","entry"],"yoast_head":"\n