The Global Times, a conservative Chinese state media tabloid, criticized South Korea’s embassy in China’s protest letter on Monday, the latest public quarrel amid worsening relations between the Asian neighbors.
In a Friday internet letter of protest, the South Korean embassy “expressed strong regret over a series of unreasonable slanderous articles” from the Global Times.
The publications “use sensational, provocative and inappropriate vocabulary to denigrate not only our leader but also the Korean government’s foreign policy,” the letter read.
The Global Times criticized the embassy’s “brutal interference in (its) independent reporting” in its editorial.
The editorial warned that South Korea’s diplomatic drive toward Japan and the U.S. would “induce and aggravate the… collapse of the situation in Northeast Asia” a day after Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida’s historic visit to Seoul.
Foreign embassies seldom criticize Chinese state media. China’s South Korean embassy did not reply to a request for comment.
The nationalist Global Times has repeatedly criticized South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol for “blindly following the U.S.” after his visit there late last month and accused Seoul of escalating tension on the Korean Peninsula due to its growing security ties with Japan and the U.S.
Kishida’s visit to Seoul on Sunday, the first by a Japanese leader in 12 years, is a sign of improving relations between South Korea and Japan as both U.S. allies seek to resolve decades-old disagreements.
Last December, China’s envoy to South Korea chastised Korean media for stoking anti-China sentiment.
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