Wang Yi Visits Seoul as Trump Scales Back Korea Drills
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- Wang Yi arrived in Seoul on Aug 19 for talks and dinner with South Korean Foreign Minister Cho Hyun, with meetings scheduled for Aug 20 with President Lee Jae Myung and National Security Adviser Wi Sung-lac.
- South Korea's Foreign Ministry is pursuing a bilateral summit between President Lee and Chinese President Xi Jinping on the sidelines of the 2026 APEC meeting in Shenzhen, with Lee expected to attend.
- South Korea and the United States scaled back joint military exercises after Trump said he ordered the changes because of his relationship with Kim Jong Un, signalling willingness to meet the North Korean leader again.
- Lee Jae Myung proposed multilateral talks involving parties to the 1950-53 Korean War to establish lasting peace on the peninsula.
- China reiterated its long-standing position that peace and stability on the Korean Peninsula serves "the common interests of all parties," without directly commenting on Trump's remarks, per Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lin Jian.
Why it matters: South Korea's Foreign Ministry is building concrete diplomatic infrastructure — a Lee-Xi summit at APEC 2026 — around the scaled-back drills, positioning Beijing as an indispensable convener of any Korean peace process while Seoul hedges between Washington reset and Beijing engagement. Beijing gains leverage as the sole treaty ally of Pyongyang with standing in any multilateral framework Lee is now proposing.
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