Seoul's goodwill gesture dented by THAAD

The remains of 28 Chinese soldiers killed in the Korean War (1950-53) will be returned by the Republic of Korea to China on Wednesday, the fourth such batch of remains to be returned after the two countries signed a handover agreement in 2013. Between 2014 and 2016, the remains of 541 soldiers were returned by the ROK to China, according to China's Ministry of Civil Affairs.

The latest handover comes amid tensions following Seoul's decision to install the US' Terminal High Altitude Area Defense anti-missile system, which Beijing is firmly opposed to, and should serve as a wake-up call to the new ROK government that the hard-won Beijing-Seoul partnership must evolve on the basis of learning from past mistakes rather than repeating them.

China and the ROK established diplomatic relations in 1992, burying their post-Korean War "confrontation" that lasted nearly four decades. Since then, the two countries have enjoyed more than two decades of reciprocal exchanges and interactions until Washington and Seoul decided to deploy the THAAD on the ROK soil last year, escalating tensions in Northeast Asia.