S Korean leader urges China’s Xi to play larger N Korea role

ABNC News:

SEOUL, South Korea — South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol asked China to play a more active, constructive role in curbing the nuclear threat from North Korea when he met Chinese President Xi Jinping on Tuesday at the Group of 20 summit in Indonesia, officials said.

Xi told Yoon that he hopes South Korea will try to improve its ties with rival North Korea, Yoon’s office said, in a reflection of the two countries’ divergent views on North Korea.

The Yoon-Xi meeting on the sidelines of the G-20, the first summit between the leaders of the two countries since December 2019, came after North Korea test-launched dozens of missiles, many of them nuclear-capable, in recent weeks.

Some experts say North Korea has been able to continue its barrage of missile tests in part because China and Russia have opposed efforts by the United States and its allies to adopt new U.N. sanctions against the North. Washington is locked in a strategic competition with Beijing and in a confrontation with Moscow over its invasion of Ukraine.

China, North Korea’s biggest source of aid and its economic lifeline, is believed to have the greatest leverage over North Korea. But it is suspected of not fully enforcing U.N. sanctions on North Korea and of shipping clandestine assistance to help keep afloat its impoverished socialist ally, which it views as a bulwark against U.S. influence on the Korean Peninsula.