South Korean govt preparing to resume summit diplomacy as soon as new president assumes office: official

Seoul, May 13 (IANS) The South Korean foreign ministry is preparing to resume diplomacy at the leaders' level once the new government is launched after the June 3 presidential election, an official said on Tuesday, amid a prolonged leadership vacuum caused by former South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol's martial law bid.

Since Yoon's brief imposition of martial law on December 3, which ultimately led to his impeachment and removal from office, South Korea's diplomacy has stalled, especially at the high level, largely due to the leadership vacuum.

A slew of multilateral diplomatic events are scheduled for next month, including the summit of the Group of Seven (G7) advanced countries in Canada and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) leaders' gathering in the Netherlands.

If confirmed, these venues are expected to serve as the first stage for the succeeding president's diplomatic debut where he could possibly meet with key world leaders for bilateral talks, including US President Donald Trump.

"We are making basic preparations to resume summit diplomacy once the new government takes office following the June 3 presidential election," a ministry official told reporters.

"We're preparing, in terms of both content and protocol, to ensure that diplomatic activities proceed without a hitch under any circumstances," he said.

South Korea is not a G7 member state, but was invited to the expanded G7 sessions in 2021 and 2023, when Britain and Japan were the host country, respectively.

South Korea has also been invited to NATO summits in recent years as one of NATO's four Indo-Pacific partners, known as the IP4, along with Japan, New Zealand and Australia, Yonhap news agency reported.

Yoon, who dramatically rose from a top prosecutor to the presidency in about three years, became the nation's second President to be formally removed from office, with his surprise martial law bid rattling the nation for months and deepening political polarisation.

Yoon, 64, follows in the footsteps of former South Korean President Park Geun-hye, who was ousted in 2017 when the Constitutional Court upheld her impeachment over a corruption scandal.

Before taking the nation's highest office, Yoon began his career as a prosecutor in 1994, rising through the ranks to lead an investigation team into Park's corruption scandal that ultimately led to her ouster and subsequent imprisonment.

In 2019, he was appointed as the nation's top prosecutor under then South Korean President Moon Jae-in but clashed with the administration as he oversaw investigations into family members of former Justice Minister Cho Kuk.

Amid mounting pressure from the Moon administration, Yoon stepped down from his post in 2021, only to enter politics shortly after and win the presidential election in 2022 as the candidate for the conservative People Power Party.

Yoon's term was riddled with conflict with an uncooperative National Assembly dominated by the main Opposition Democratic Party (DP). Yoon exercised his presidential veto power against 25 Bills passed by the National Assembly.

Tensions with the DP appeared to reach an extreme in early December as the main Opposition introduced motions to impeach the country's top auditor and a senior prosecutor, with Yoon declaring martial law on December 3, which ultimately led to his downfall.

--IANS

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