Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen, right, and U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi wave during their meeting in Taipei, Taiwan, Wednesday. EPA-Yonhap

No meetings planned between No. 3 US politician and South Korean president, foreign minister

By Kang Seung-woo

A visit by U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to South Korea is likely to perplex Seoul further in the handling of its relations with China, which are already at an inflection point due to pending bilateral yet volatile issues.

Pelosi is widely expected to urge longtime ally South Korea to respond to the U.S.-led campaign against China's authoritarianism, according to diplomatic observers.

The U.S. house speaker, the third-highest official in the U.S. government, arrived here, Wednesday, for a two-day trip following her visit to Taiwan.

Her visit to South Korea, the first time since 2015, comes as the United States has been seeking more coordination among its allies and partners to counter China, as evidenced by its proposal for Seoul to join the Chip 4 or Fab 4, an envisaged chip alliance with Japan, Taiwan and South Korea. But the Chinese government has also pressured and persuaded Seoul against edging away from Beijing, its largest trading partner. The chip alliance is a platform apparently aimed at countering China's growing influence on global supply chains.

In addition, China has urged South Korea to uphold the previous administration's commitment to the "Three Nos" policy on the U.S. Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) deployment, which called for no additional THAAD missile battery deployments, no Korean integration into a U.S.-led regional missile defense system and no trilateral alliance with the U.S. and Japan.

"Amid the deepening U.S.-China rivalry, China has threatened military actions and it could invoke a U.S. response in kind, which would eventually affect South Korea, because of the South's alliance with the U.S.," said Kim Heung-kyu, the director of the U.S.-China Policy Institute at Ajou University.

"With Pelosi's visit to Taipei, the Chinese government could take retaliatory action against Taiwan, which would work to South Korea's advantage in the short term because South Korea and Taiwan compete in the semiconductor sector, but it would not necessarily be a good thing for us in the long run, so stable relations between the U.S. and China, and between Taiwan and China will be in the national interest here," Kim said.

Park Won-gon, a professor of North Korean studies at Ewha Womans University, also said Pelosi's visit could leave less diplomatic room for South Korea to maneuver in its ties with China.

"As the rivalry is intertwined with each country's respective domestic politics, both the U.S. and China cannot back off against each other," he said.

"In that respect, with the hegemonic competition between the two powerhouses further intensifying, if South Korea decides to commit to the Chip 4, possible Chinese responses could be fierier and inflammable," he said.