The government has not received an official invitation from Seoul to attend South Korean president-elect Yoon Suk-yeol’s inauguration ceremony today, Minister of Foreign Affairs Joseph Wu (吳釗燮) said yesterday.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs was still discussing the issue with South Korean authorities “via various channels,” hoping that they would extend an invitation, Wu said.
“We really hope that Taiwan can send a delegation to the ceremony to express the congratulations of the country and its people to the new president,” Wu said at a meeting of the legislature’s Foreign Affairs and National Defense Committee.
Photo: Peter Lo, Taipei Times
Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Wang Ting-yu (王定宇) had asked Wu whether Taiwan had been invited to the ceremony, which is to take place today in the plaza in front of the South Korean National Assembly in Seoul.
The ministry had last week given the impression that it would have the opportunity to attend the ceremony in Seoul, without disclosing whether it had yet received an invitation.
It said it had planned to send a delegation of lawmakers to the ceremony, but dropped the idea considering that they would have had to quarantine for seven days upon returning to Taiwan because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Instead, the Taipei Mission in Korea, which represents Taiwan’s interests in South Korea in the absence of official diplomatic ties, would send its officials to the ceremony, ministry spokeswoman Joanne Ou (歐江安) said on Thursday.
Without an invitation, those officials cannot attend.
Taiwan has maintained lukewarm relations with South Korea since Seoul switched recognition from Taipei to Beijing in 1992, with few official exchanges taking place.
A rare exception came in 2013, when former legislative speaker Wang Jin-pyng (王金平) led a delegation to attend the inauguration of former South Korean president Park Geun-hye.
The trip was seen by Taipei as a diplomatic breakthrough.
A previous delegation led by Wang was unable to attend the inauguration of former South Korean president Lee Myung-bak’s in 2008 because of pressure from Beijing, even though Wang’s delegation had already arrived in Seoul for the event.
When South Korean President Moon Jae-in’s inauguration was held in May 2017, no guests were invited from overseas as he took office one day after being elected.
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