South Korea shuns Huawei over fears that it spies on the US
We've long known that the US government has major security concerns about Huawei, despite the Chinese company's insistence that it's free of Communist Party influence. As a result, Huawei has been barred from taking on infrastructure contracts within the Land of the Free, but it appears this safeguard still isn't enough: According to the Wall Street Journal, the US has now risked further diplomatic awkwardness by asking its key ally in the region, South Korea, to re-route all sensitive communications that involve the US away from any Huawei-built equipment. The State Department has partly denied this report, saying that South Korea has changed its policy out of its own volition, but it follows that there must be some degree of concern that Huawei's systems in Korea are accessible to Chinese spies, and perhaps in turn to North Korean ones, too. The only other explanation is that the US and South Korea are holding a very public and very unfair grudge against a totally innocent company. Who knows what the truth is? Beyond throwing in the obvious pot-kettle metaphor, we're not really qualified to comment.
