US President Joe Biden's visit to Seoul will comprehensively strengthen the alliance between Seoul and Washington, South Korean President-elect Yoon Suk-yeol said on Wednesday
MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 27th April, 2022) US President Joe Biden's visit to Seoul will comprehensively strengthen the alliance between Seoul and Washington, South Korean President-elect Yoon Suk-yeol said on Wednesday.
"I believe it (Biden's visit) will be a good opportunity for the South Korea-U.S. alliance to be comprehensively reinforced," Yoon was quoted by South Korean news agency Yonhap as saying.
On April 15, South Korean media reported that Seoul and Washington were planning to hold a summit between Yoon and Biden on May 21 in Seoul, ahead of Biden's visit to Japan for a Quad meeting on May 24.
If the summit takes place, it will be the first meeting between the US president and South Korea's new leader since his inauguration. Yoon is set to assume office on May 10.
The Quad was instigated in 2007 by then Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe as an informal consultation mechanism of four countries sharing the values of "a free and open Indo-Pacific region" Australia, India, Japan and the United States. The dialogue is paralleled by an annual joint military exercise, Exercise Malabar, with the diplomatic and military arrangement widely seen as a response to China's surging economic and military influence in the region. The Chinese government denounced the dialogue, lodging a formal diplomatic protest to its participants, regarding the Quad as "Asian NATO."
