Seogangseok, Songpa-gu Mayor: "China Should Bet on Korea"

Seogangseok, Mayor of Songpa District, Posts on His Facebook on the Afternoon of the 16th: “China Should Bet on Korea”

Refutes Recent Criticism of South Korea by Xing Haiming, Chinese Ambassador to Korea, Who Summoned Lee Jae-myung, Leader of the Democratic Party

Seogangseok, Mayor of Songpa District Office

Seogangseok, Mayor of Songpa District, drew attention on the afternoon of the 16th by strongly criticizing remarks made by Xing Haiming, the Chinese Ambassador to Korea.

On that day, the mayor posted on his Facebook, “The Chinese Ambassador to Korea, Xing Haiming, summoned the leader of the main opposition party and said that if Korea ‘bets on the U.S. winning,’ it would regret it, making remarks that ignored South Korea’s sovereignty as if he were a Chinese envoy during the Joseon Dynasty.”

He added, “President Yoon Suk-yeol expressed suspicion about the ambassador’s attitude, recalling the late Joseon period’s Qing official Yuan Shikai who acted as a governor-general. Seoul Mayor Oh Se-hoon said the ambassador should have refrained from ‘rude remarks.’ Many citizens’ feelings were deeply hurt,” he stated.

He continued, “A past government president said, ‘The Chinese Dream is a dream humanity shares, and although Korea is a small country, it will share that dream.’ A former mayor said, ‘If a fly lands on a horse’s rear, it will travel ten thousand miles,’ showing subservience to China and making China regard South Korea not as an equal nation but as a vassal state,” he criticized.

Mayor Seo emphasized, “The Republic of Korea, which established a liberal democratic constitution on August 15, 1948, is not the Joseon of the past. In fact, the Korean people have fought against China and won. The Tang Dynasty waged the Silla-Tang War in 670 to make Unified Silla a vassal state, and the defeated Tang Dynasty collapsed 20 years after its founding in 690 (revived in 705 and completely destroyed in 907).”

He recalled that the previous dynasty to the Tang, the Sui Dynasty, also fell 40 years after its founding when Emperor Yang of Sui was defeated by General Eulji Mundeok of Goguryeo.

He also claimed, “China’s extreme leftist authoritarian rule that oppressed its people through the Cultural Revolution and the Great Leap Forward during Mao Zedong’s era, and its status as a defeated country that exhausted its national power without any gains in the Korean War, are reasons for its decline.”

After a long time passed, when Deng Xiaoping pursued the policy of “hide your strength, bide your time” and reform and opening up, the first countries to help China with technology and capital were industrialized South Korea and Japan. China’s history shows that it declined when hostile to South Korea and prospered when friendly, so China should bet on South Korea, he emphasized.

At the beginning of his Facebook post, Mayor Seo wrote that South Korean intelligence agencies concluded that the Chinese restaurant Dongfang Mingzhu by the Han River in Jamsil was effectively a Chinese secret police station handling Chinese business and repatriation affairs, a clear infringement of South Korean sovereignty, and that Songpa District had filed a complaint for business violations.

Amid public discomfort over the Chinese ambassador’s remarks, Mayor Seogangseok attracted attention by clearly stating his position while referring to historical facts.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.