(LEAD) Park-Xi summit enhances economic cooperation, but reveals fundamental differences on N. Korea: US experts

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By Chang Jae-soon

WASHINGTON, July 3 (Yonhap) -- South Korea and China succeeded in bolstering cooperation on economic and other bilateral issues through this week's summit, but the meeting also revealed their fundamental differences on how to deal with North Korea, U.S. experts said Thursday.

South Korean President Park Geun-hye and Chinese President Xi Jinping held talks in Seoul on Thursday. The two sides said in a joint statement after the meeting that they reaffirmed their "firm opposition" to nuclear weapons development on the Korean Peninsula.

But the statement stopped short of directly urging North Korea to give up its nuclear program, only vaguely calling for all members of the six-party nuclear talks to resolve the issue through dialogue and abide by their 2005 denuclearization-for-aid deal.

Xi's visit to Seoul marked the first time that China's new president has visited the South before visiting the traditional ally North. This was considered China's snub of North Korea, but Thursday's summit showed that China's fundamental stance on Pyongyang has not changed, analysts said.

"We should avoid the mistake made after the U.S.-Chinese Sunnyland's summit when many in the U.S. thought that Chinese policy had shifted and Beijing was going to be more proactive in pressuring the DPRK (North Korea) to return to the Six Party Talks and denuclearize," said Joel Wit, a former State Department official and editor of the 38 North website at Johns Hopkins University.

Wit was referring to Xi's summit with U.S. President Barack Obama last year when the Chinese president spoke unusually critically about North Korea and led many to believe that Beijing's stance on Pyongyang might be changing.

"The Xi-Park summit may be intended to send a political signal to Pyongyang but whether it actually entails any substantive change in China's views on how to handle North Korea is entirely unclear," Wit said. "Indeed, it is likely that there has been no substantive shift and Beijing blames the United States and South Korea just as much as Pyongyang for the inability of concerned parties to solve the nuclear and other challenges posed by the North."

   Thursday's summit produced a series of deals on bilateral issues, including agreements to wrap up bilateral free trade negotiations by the end of this year, hold high-level strategic dialogues on a regular basis and set up a direct transaction system for their currencies.

Douglas Paal, vice president for studies at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, also said that the joint statement "reflected the nuances of difference" in South Korean and Chinese approaches to the North and "had a heavily economic focus on bilateral relations."

   "These are positive things," Paal said, referring to the summit's focus on bilateral ties. "It is also encouraging that the joint statement contains no negative implications for the U.S. ... Nor was Japan dragged unhelpfully into the statement."

   Scott Snyder, senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, also said that the Park-Xi summit carries "great symbolic significance" and showed an intent by both sides to raise the level of relations between the two countries.

But Snyder also noted that there are inherent challenges involved in efforts to move political relations between Seoul and Beijing forward.

"In a regional environment where so many bilateral relationships face rising tensions, the intent of both leaders to maintain good relations is significant. But there are factors that prevent the political side of the China-South Korea relationship from matching the economic side," he said.

South Korea "cannot afford to abandon its alliance with the United States, while China envisions a sphere of influence in Asia that implies the marginalization and obsolescence of the U.S. alliance framework," he said.

Thursday's summit marked the fifth meeting between Park and Xi since they assumed office last year. But such frequent summits do not necessarily mean that Xi has thrown his lot in with South Korea, said Victor Cha of the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

"We have witnessed a tactical shift by Xi after the third nuclear test and the execution of Jang Song-thaek. There is not yet evidence of a strategic shift on China's part, though this is undeniably Park's aspiration," he said.

jschang@yna.co.kr

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