By Kim Hae-yeon

Korea Herald correspondent

SAN DIEGO -- President Yoon Suk Yeol’s security aide was spotted on Tuesday at Bio USA, the biotech industry’s largest gathering being held in San Diego, immediately prompting media scrutiny about the purpose of the rare visit.

Wang Yun-jong, the third deputy director of the presidential National Security Office, stayed at the site for about 30 minutes. He was accompanied by Choi Sun, a presidential secretary for biotech policy, and other officials from trade offices.

“Bio (technology) was not a security issue before. But I feel the need to consider the issue from the perspective of health security,” Wang told reporters.

It was the first time that a Korean ranking presidential official handling security issues has visited the annual event over the past two decades. Wang is an expert on China and foreign economic policy.

Wang’s surprise appearance garnered attention amid China’s boycott of the US event, possibly in protest of Washington’s Biosecurity Act, which aims to limit the business activities of Chinese biotech companies due to security concerns. Chinese contract development manufacturing organizations, or CDMOs, in particular, are expected to be hit hard by the bill.

Upon the visit, Wang looked around the exhibition booths of Korean CDMOs, including Samsung Biologics, Celltrion and Lotte Biologics. He also visited the booths of US-based biological therapy developer Cytiva and Lonza, a Switzerland-based CDMO giant.

The Korean officials are expected to hold high-level talks with their US counterparts on biosecurity on Wednesday. Officials from India and Japan, key allies of the US, are also likely to join the meeting.

“We have a strong will on biotechnology,” Choi told reporters. “Tomorrow’s meeting is a follow-up to the first Korea-US meeting in December last year. The meeting started as a bilateral meeting but has been expanded into a multilateral meeting with Japan.”