Park to meet with Xi, attend military parade in Beijing

President Park Geun-hye will hold summit talks with Chinese President Xi Jinping next week, Cheong Wa Dae said Wednesday, ahead of China’s celebrations of the 70th anniversary of the end of World War II.

The summit is set to take place next Wednesday upon her arrival in China for a three-day visit, the presidential office said.

On Thursday, Park plans to watch the huge military parade to be staged in Tiananmen Square before attending a luncheon reception to be hosted by Xi at the Great Hall of the People, it said. The square is the site of the bloody crackdown of the pro-democracy movement in 1989.

Park’s decision is the latest in a series of moves that could highlight South Korea’s deepening ties with China, South Korea’s largest trade partner.

South Korea and China are former battlefield foes as China fought on North Korea’s side against South Korea and the U.S.-led U.N. forces in the 1950-53 Korean War, which ended in a ceasefire, not a peace treaty. South Korea and China have steadily improved ties since establishing diplomatic relations in 1992.

The trip will also take Park to Shanghai on Thursday to attend a ceremony to reopen a historic building that was used by Korea’s provisional government during Japan’s 1910-45 colonial rule of the Korean Peninsula.

Many Koreans moved to China to continue the anti-Japanese resistance movement during the colonial rule.

The provisional government was formed on April 13, 1919 as the Korean government-in-exile, a month after Korea launched an independence movement against Japan. The Korean Peninsula was later divided into the capitalistic South and communist North after its independence from Japan in 1945. (Yonhap)