The two-day state visit of Chinese President Xi Jinping to the Republic of Korea is significant not least because he is visiting the ROK before the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, as has been the established practice. Accordingly, many expect his visit to yield greater results.

What are the key issues that Xi and ROK President Park Geun-hye are likely to discuss?

The first subject that comes to most people's mind is the DPRK nuclear issue. And the first step toward resolving the issue is to make it clear to the DPRK that it must abandon its nuclear program for the stability of the Korean Peninsula. The ROK and the DPRK signed "the Joint Declaration of Denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula" in 1991. As a result, the ROK asked the US army to remove all its nuclear weapons from its territory. But instead of abandoning its nuclear program, the DPRK "scrapped" the agreement and conducted three nuclear tests. So the ROK is likely to ask China, which supports the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, to put more pressure on the DPRK to give up its nuclear program once and for all.