SEOUL—The Chinese were firing missiles Thursday near the island province of Taiwan while Speaker Nancy Pelosi did her best to avoid or change the whole disquieting subject.
That’s because Pelosi was in Korea, and the South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol obviously wants nothing to do with the issue of Pelosi’s defiance of Beijing’s threats to take over the island.
Well before she got here, Yoon’s aides were saying he was “on vacation” and therefore wouldn’t be seeing her.
ADVERTISEMENT
Lest Yoon look like he was totally snubbing her, however, he did consent to yakking with her for 40 minutes on the phone as she was to visit the Demilitarized Zone between the two Koreas.
Pelosi didn’t reveal what they were talking about, but Yoon’s office did say they vowed a tough line against North Korea—not China.
Her visit here showed the resolve of both the U.S. and South Korea to work together on “deterrence” against North Korea. And, yes, the conservative Yoon, who’s given his blessing to war games with U.S. forces, said they agreed to “deepen bilateral alliance.”
Right, but what about Taiwan, near which Chinese missiles and artillery shells were falling as he and Pelosi were on the phone? It was as though the word was off-limits.
Nor did Pelosi talk about Taiwan as she met her opposite number here, National Assembly Speaker Kim Jin-pyo. Standing beside him in a pro forma session for the media before they adjourned for lunch, she said they had talked about such compelling topics as “security, economics and governance.”
As the five-minute appearance abruptly closed, Pelosi ignored the futile shout of a female journalist to answer a question or two. And she turned the other way when she saw this reporter, notebook in hand, ready to pounce with a question before she climbed into her limousine for the short drive to lunch.
Coming out of the lunch, she looked down and talked busily to an aide while walking by me, again to her limousine.
Clearly she didn’t want to say a word about the ongoing Chinese exercises, being conducted from six points around Taiwan. Chinese ships close to, if not inside what Taiwan claims as its territorial waters, Chinese helicopters sweeping down on imaginary targets—it was all happening as commercial vessels and planes were told to stay away. Beijing said the exercises were for “self-defense,” but they looked like a rehearsal for China’s ultimate goal of “eventual reunification.”
Pelosi had to have been briefed—they were the biggest Chinese exercises ever around Taiwan, and they would not have happened on such a large scale had Pelosi not made good on her determination to go there. Much as she might have loved to denounce them, President Yoon clearly didn’t want to hear her thoughts on the subject.
South Korea may be an ally with the U.S., but it also has to get along with China, its biggest trading partner, also believed capable of restraining North Korea’s Kim Jong Un from ordering another nuclear test or attacking the South. As Yonhap, the South Korean news agency, quoted an aide, “Everything is decided according to national interest.”
