U.S. President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping held a summit in Washington, D.C., over three days from the 23rd to the 25th of this month. The talks produced no clear breakthrough, leaving the two powers locked in strategic competition. South Korea faces no shortage of challenges amid the friction, from U.S. tariff pressure and China's technological rise to the question of North Korean denuclearization. In an interview with The Seoul Economic Daily on the 28th, Kang Joon-young, a professor at the Graduate School of International and Area Studies at Hankuk University of Foreign Studies and an expert on China and international diplomacy, said the two summits held this year suggest "U.S.-China relations will maintain a tone of managed competition rather than full-blown collision for the time being." He added that "competition over technological supremacy, including semiconductors, could continue structurally regardless of the summits." Kang stressed that "South Korea must use this favorable phase in U.S.-China summit diplomacy to secure tangible gains such as tariff and supply chain exemptions, while at the same time building a refined strategy for a prolonged structural rivalry."
— How do you assess this U.S.-China summit?
△With both Washington and Beijing stretched thin since the Iran war broke out in February, the September talks appear to have focused less on full reconciliation than on setting a "strategic pause" and reaffirming management mechanisms. For China, the value lay in cementing a "managed competition structure" through reciprocal state visits by the two leaders within half a year, aimed at achieving the "constructive strategic stability relationship" Beijing emphasizes. But structural conflicts such as advanced technology controls and the Taiwan issue were left unresolved, reconfirming the limits of the framework.
— Didn't domestic political pressures weigh on both sides?
△Avoiding collision was the priority for both, given their domestic political calendars. Trump could hardly ignore the midterm elections. Xi had to keep in mind this year's fifth plenary session of the 20th Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party and next year's 21st Party Congress, both tied to his own extended tenure. The second Trump administration's emphasis is on maintaining technological supremacy and reducing supply chain reliance on China. The intent is closer to a "small yard, high fence" approach — selective blocking in core sectors — than to across-the-board decoupling. In the end, the strategic competition is likely to unfold as a tactical truce in the short term, with structural rivalry centered on artificial intelligence, semiconductors and supply chains persisting over the medium to long term. We need to take advantage of this favorable phase in U.S.-China summit diplomacy. We must secure tangible gains such as tariff and supply chain exemptions while maintaining a separate, parallel strategy for a drawn-out structural contest.
— Attention is also turning to the global diplomatic events that follow this summit.
△At upcoming multilateral gatherings — the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Shenzhen, China, in November and the Group of 20 summit in Miami in December — competition to secure bilateral meetings is expected to be fierce. For us, the key is starting agenda coordination early. As the symbolism of the G20 venue being a resort personally owned by Trump suggests, multilateral diplomacy in the second half of 2026 is likely to be driven by Trump's personal agenda. That is why we need to expand the weight of working-level coordination channels with the president. Rather than responding to each event in isolation, we should treat the second half's global events as a single continuous "diplomatic season" and build a comprehensive strategy.
— Diplomatic circles are speculating about a U.S.-North Korea summit before year-end.
△Given that China's post-summit statement said the Korean Peninsula issue was also discussed, it appears the matter was raised in general terms. There is strong talk of a meeting between Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un on the margins of the APEC summit in Shenzhen in November. But with China as the host, the format of Kim's attendance and questions of security and protocol could become the biggest variables. If a meeting materializes, it is more likely to take the frame of "normalizing relations and discussing arms reduction" than denuclearization negotiations. That could be read as a signal of tacit acceptance of North Korea's status as a nuclear-armed state, which would amplify the fallout. If Washington and Pyongyang strike a deal with Seoul excluded, the "Korea passing" controversy could reignite, so close coordination channels between Seoul and Washington must be secured in advance.
— President Lee Jae-myung recently proposed easing sanctions on North Korea on the premise of a nuclear "freeze."
△North Korea currently accepts only dialogue premised on its "status as a nuclear-armed state." Given Trump's transactional approach to diplomacy, there is room for future talks between Washington and Pyongyang. But lifting sanctions could amount to recognizing North Korea as a "de facto nuclear-armed state," and freezing intercontinental ballistic missiles does not resolve the existing nuclear threat to which South Korea is exposed. The president's proposal requires preconditions.
— What should those preconditions be?
△First, denuclearization must be stated as the final goal, and a "snapback" provision must be secured to restore sanctions to their original state if the agreement is violated after they are lifted. Above all, a clear understanding between Seoul and Washington on denuclearization as the ultimate objective must come first. The linkage to that final goal must be designed clearly so that the United States does not view a "freeze" as a retreat from denuclearization. Given that past agreements ran aground at the verification stage, the verification framework — including what is to be frozen and how it will be verified — should be spelled out in as much detail as possible beforehand.
— The Lee Jae-myung government is promoting a pragmatic diplomacy strategy, but the obstacles are considerable.
△Diplomatic circles have floated various specific approaches to pragmatic diplomacy. Among them, a "go-it-alone" strategy carries excessive security-vacuum risk and is unrealistic. A "playing both sides" strategy risks losing the trust of Washington and Beijing at the same time. "Bandwagoning with China" would shake the foundation of the Korea-U.S. alliance and carries excessive security risk. Relying solely on "strengthening the Korea-U.S. alliance" leaves us vulnerable in managing economic and trade risks with China. In the end, an issue-by-issue "transcendent diplomacy" — anchoring security on the alliance with the United States while pursuing pragmatic multilateralism in the economy and industry — appears the realistic alternative. But because transcendent diplomacy risks being seen as tightrope walking without principles, clear criteria based on values and interests should be declared in advance to ensure predictability for outside partners.
— The Iran war has yet to find an exit.
△As the war passes six months in a stalemate, U.S. military and diplomatic resources are being locked into the Middle East for the long haul, and the momentum behind its Indo-Pacific strategy is relatively weakening. With China seeking to exploit that strategic vacuum to expand influence in the South China Sea and the Taiwan Strait, volatility in the Asia-Pacific balance of power is widening further. South Korea needs to reject the binary "either-or" frame and hold to a hedging strategy based on tangible interests, issue by issue. Security and economic and energy issues should be handled separately along diversification lines. While minimizing direct involvement in the Iran issue itself, we should preemptively strengthen an independent response system for energy security risks emanating from the Strait of Hormuz, including crude oil stockpiles and diversified import sources. We need a refined balancing strategy that accelerates integration into "friend-shoring" supply chains centered on allies and friendly countries while minimizing damage to access to the Chinese market.
— Talks on the second phase of the Korea-China free trade agreement and on joining the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership are active.
△The core of the second FTA phase is wider opening in services and investment. Institutional safeguards against China's non-tariff barriers and data regulation risks should be put in place first, before pursuing liberalization. Joining the CPTPP is a lever to structurally reduce dependence on China and can also serve as a card in negotiations with the United States. But complementary measures for sensitive domestic sectors such as agriculture and fisheries must come first. The Korea-China FTA and the CPTPP should be designed not as competing tracks but as a mutually complementary, multilayered trade strategy. China risk should be addressed through institutional improvements in the FTA, and external diversification spread through the CPTPP.
— China's semiconductor push is intensifying.
△With Chinese memory maker ChangXin Memory Technologies moving to enter the NAND flash market after DRAM, warning lights are already flashing over a "chicken game" in the chip market. The commodity DRAM push by CXMT and others is eating into the low- to mid-priced segment of Korean memory on the strength of price competitiveness. If China's volume offensive is added to existing players' NAND capacity expansion, the kind of bruising price war seen in the past could return. To maintain our semiconductor competitiveness, keeping an insurmountable lead in advanced processes such as high-bandwidth memory is absolutely essential. Taiwan is holding its foundry lead through TSMC, but Taiwan Strait risk is deepening structural uncertainty over supply chain stability. We should turn that situation to our advantage and capture spillover benefits by creating incentives to diversify production bases. The biggest task is a refined balance that maximizes practical gains between U.S. export controls and subsidy policy on one side and access to the Chinese market on the other.
— Moves toward multipolarity and middle-power solidarity have grown stronger since the Iran war began.
△As multipolarity gains force, the global diplomatic landscape has become one in which our country cannot secure bargaining power on par with a superpower on its own. That is why we must substantially raise our use of solidarity with middle powers and emerging economies. It is also a moment that calls for securing diplomatic standing under the banner of defending a rules-based multilateral order against the spread of every-nation-for-itself unilateralism. But so that coalition diplomacy does not remain merely declaratory, we should selectively lead agenda-driven minilateral groupings tied to concrete trade and security interests. In the gaps of great-power competition, we should stake out and strategize specific issues — supply chain resilience, digital norms and the like — where Korea can exercise middle-power leadership.
He is…
Born in 1962 in Yeongi County, South Chungcheong Province, he graduated from Kyungdong High School in Seoul and the Department of Chinese at Hankuk University of Foreign Studies, then earned master's and doctoral degrees from the Institute of East Asian Studies at National Chengchi University in Taiwan. He served as president of the Korean Association of Social Sciences on China and has been an honorary professor at the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences and a visiting professor at Peking University and the University of International Business and Economics in China. He served as an adviser on national security policy to the Presidential Office and as an adviser on parliamentary diplomacy to the National Assembly, and currently serves as a policy adviser to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and as head of the force and strategy subcommittee of the Navy Development Advisory Committee. He is currently a professor at the Graduate School of International and Area Studies at Hankuk University of Foreign Studies, where he heads the Center for International Area Studies and the HK+ National Strategy Project Group.
