China’s top diplomat Wang Yi concluded his visit to South Korea on Friday but declined to endorse Seoul’s push for multi-party peace talks involving the North. However, North Korea responded with more than 10 short-range ballistic missile launches on Thursday, prompting the South’s presidential office to call an emergency security meeting. exchanges between peoples. But Wang, who visited the country last year with Xi and was making his first solo trip in five years, delivered a direct message to President Lee Jae Myung and other top officials. He urged them to seek “genuine strategic autonomy,” avoid “en bloc confrontation or taking sides,” and develop relations with Beijing and Washington “in a mutually compatible manner,” according to the Foreign Ministry in Beijing.
