South Korean President Lee Jae Myung on Saturday sought help from Chinese President Xi Jinping in efforts to resume talks with its nuclear-armed neighbor North Korea, as Xi told Lee he was willing to expand cooperation and jointly address the challenges they face.
Lee hosted Xi at a state summit and dinner after the annual Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (Apec) summit in the South Korean city of Gyeongju, marking Xi’s first visit to the US ally in 11 years.
Beijing attaches great importance to relations with Seoul and sees South Korea as an inseparable cooperative partner, Xi said before the summit, according to Lee’s office.
Lee, who was elected president in a snap election in June, has vowed to strengthen ties with the United States without alienating China and seeking to reduce tensions with the North.
“I am very positive about the situation in which the conditions for engagement with North Korea are being formed,” Lee said, referring to recent high-level exchanges between China and North Korea.
“I also hope that South Korea and China will take advantage of these favorable conditions to strengthen strategic communication to resume dialogue with North Korea.”
Lee has called for a gradual approach to North Korea’s denuclearization, starting with committing to and freezing further nuclear weapons development.
In a statement on Saturday, Pyongyang, China’s military and economic ally, dismissed the denuclearization agenda as an unrealizable “pipe dream.”
North Korea has repeatedly and explicitly rejected Lee’s overtures, saying it will never talk to the South. In recent years, Pyongyang abandoned its long-standing policy of unification with the South and labeled Seoul as its main enemy.
Leader Kim Jong Un said he would be willing to talk to the United States if Washington drops its denuclearization demands, but did not respond publicly when US President Donald Trump offered talks during his visit to South Korea earlier this week.
Trump and Lee announced a surprise breakthrough in talks to reduce U.S. tariffs in exchange for billions of dollars in South Korean investment. The US president then departed ahead of the Apec top leaders’ summit.
South Korea’s national security adviser Wi Sunglac said in a briefing that China expressed its willingness to cooperate for peace and stability on the Korean Peninsula, but the leaders did not specifically discuss what kind of role China would play.
Both sides also agreed that dialogue between the United States and North Korea was most important, the adviser said.
Chinese state media reports of the meeting with Lee made no mention of discussions about North Korea.
According XinhuaXi proposed ways to open a new chapter in relations, including making each country “respect each other’s social systems and development paths, take into account core interests and major concerns, and properly handle differences through friendly consultations.”
Xi also called for upholding multilateralism and increasing cooperation in areas such as artificial intelligence, biopharmaceuticals, green industries and aging populations. Xinhua reported.
During Xi’s visit, China and South Korea signed seven agreements, including a won-yuan currency swap and memorandums of understanding on online crime, businesses serving aging populations and innovation, among other issues.
Political and economic concerns
South Korea is a military ally and major trade partner of the United States, but it also relies heavily on trade with China.
Hundreds of protesters joined an anti-China rally in Seoul today as Xi and Lee met.
Protesters carried banners reading “South Korea belongs to South Korea” and “China out,” while chanting “Chinese and communism, get out of South Korea” as they marched through the Hongdae area’s vibrant shopping street.
Kim Hye Kyung, a 64-year-old conservative protester, said she joined the rally to “protect liberal democracy” in her country.
Amid a surge in such protests, Lee in October ordered a crackdown on anti-Chinese and anti-foreign demonstrations that he said were damaging the country’s image and economy.
Wi said Lee and Xi had a “productive” discussion about Chinese sanctions on five units of South Korean shipbuilder Hanwha Ocean linked to the United States. Beijing has said the sanctions were related to security risks arising from the company’s cooperation with US investigations.
Wi said there were discussions at the summit about years-long restrictions on South Korean entertainment content, effectively banned after the 2017 deployment of the U.S.-led Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) missile defense system to South Korea.
He said the two sides can continue to communicate on the matter at the working level as they share the need for cultural exchanges.
Lee also raised the issue of structures placed in disputed waters between the countries, which China claims are for fishing purposes.
On the sidelines of an ASEAN defense summit in Malaysia on Saturday, South Korea’s Defense Minister met his Chinese counterpart and raised the issue of Chinese military activity in the Korean Air Defense Identification Zone (KADIZ).
China’s Xi pushes for creation of global AI body in opposition to US
Separately, Xi took center stage at the Apec summit today to push a proposal for a global body to govern artificial intelligence and position China as an alternative to the United States in trade cooperation.
Apec is a consultative forum of 21 nations representing half of world trade, including the United States, China, Russia and Japan. The summit, hosted by South Korea this year, unfolded under the shadow of rising geopolitical tensions and aggressive economic strategies (ranging from US tariffs to China’s export controls) that have put pressure on global trade.
Xi’s comments were the first by the Chinese leader on an initiative Beijing unveiled this year, while the United States has rejected efforts to regulate AI in international bodies.
Xi said a Global Artificial Intelligence Cooperation Organization could establish governance rules and boost cooperation, making AI a “public good for the international community.”
In statements published by the official news agency Xinhua“Artificial intelligence is of great significance for future development and should be realized for the benefit of people in all countries and regions,” Xi added.
Chinese officials have said the organization could be based in the commercial hub of Shanghai.
While advanced chips made by California-based Nvidia are critical to the rise of AI, China-based developer DeepSeek has launched lower-cost models adopted by Beijing in a push for what it calls “algorithmic sovereignty.”
Xi also urged Apec to promote the “free circulation” of green technologies, a group of industries ranging from batteries to solar panels that China dominates.
Xi announced that China will host the 2026 Apec summit in Shenzhen, a major manufacturing hub, from robotics to electric car production.
The Chinese president said the city of nearly 18 million people had been a fishing village until it blossomed into one of the country’s first special economic zones in the 1980s.
Trump skipped the Apec leaders’ summit in the South Korean city of Gyeongju and flew back to Washington immediately after a meeting with Xi that resulted in a one-year deal to partially roll back trade and technology controls.
In Trump’s absence, analysts expected Xi to use the Apec meeting to promote China as a champion of its own brand of multilateral cooperation on trade and economic development.
APEC leaders call for shared trade benefits
Faced with deepening fractures in the global trade order, Asia-Pacific leaders adopted a joint statement that emphasized the need for resilience and shared benefits in trade at the end of the annual Apec summit.
While Trump did not attend the summit, Washington’s views were still laid out in the statement, analysts said, which, unlike last year’s document, made no mention of multilateralism or the World Trade Organization (WTO).
“It is a result of member countries recognizing, at least to some extent, that it will be difficult to restore a free trade order based on multilateralism and the World Trade Organization,” said Heo Yoon, a professor of international trade at Seoul’s Sogang University.
“We can no longer deny that there is a paradigm shift in the global trade order,” Heo added.
With Trump’s swift departure ahead of the leaders’ summit, China positioned itself as a strong supporter of free and open trade, a role the United States has dominated for decades.
However, Heo and analysts say the joint statement suggests member countries were wary of giving the impression that the United States was undermining free trade while presenting China as a guardian of multilateralism.
“Few countries believe that there can be a new trade order that excludes the United States,” he said.
