A handwritten note delivered mid-session at an international defense conference in Seoul turned into one of the most striking public confrontations this year between a U.S. treaty ally and the Chinese military, after Philippine Defense Secretary Gilberto Teodoro Jr. read the letter aloud and rebuked its author in front of the hall.
The exchange took place during the annual Seoul Defense Dialogue in South Korea, according to reporting from The Daily Wire. Defense ministers and personnel from 67 countries were in attendance when a staffer passed a note from China’s military attaché to Teodoro.
The letter, written by hand, challenged the 2016 Permanent Court of Arbitration tribunal ruling issued under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) Annex VII — the decision that adjudicated the maritime dispute between China and the Philippines. The ruling went against Chinese claims to parts of the South China Sea and upheld Philippine claims to those waters.
In the note, Beijing maintained that the decision carried no weight, declaring that ‘the so-called award is illegal, null, and void … and has no binding force.’ The letter added that China ‘neither recognizes nor accepts the award.’
A Blunt Reply, Delivered Out Loud
When Teodoro reached that line, he paused and responded to the room: ‘Of course, because you lost.’
After finishing the passage rejecting the UNCLOS ruling — a decision the United States supports — the Philippine defense secretary told the audience, ‘The thing speaks for itself.’ He also noted that the letter amounted to a slight against South Korea, the host country of the gathering.
Turning to those in the room, Teodoro asked how anyone could expect to negotiate with Beijing in a civil manner. He called on China to show what he described as basic decency, and characterized the country as a bully.
He said he intended to keep the letter as a ‘memento of how desperate China is, and how ineffective its position is in the face of a free audience.’ Then he turned the note’s delivery into a pointed compliment aimed at the attaché himself.
According to the account, Teodoro said the military official had done his country ‘a great service’ — and closed by expressing hope that the attaché would not ‘suffer in a gulag’ as a result.
The room broke into loud applause after his remarks.
Long-Running Tensions Over the South China Sea
The Chinese Communist Party has for years pressed expansive maritime claims along its so-called ‘nine-dash line,’ which covers more than 80% of the South China Sea. Those claims overlap with the territorial waters of several U.S. allies as well as international trading routes that carry a substantial share of global commerce, giving the disputes direct significance to American national interests.
The strategic weight of those waters is difficult to overstate. A 2025 report from the Center for Strategic and International Studies found that 29% of global seaborne oil trade moves through the Strait of Malacca, a waterway connected to the South China Sea — making it, by that measure, more consequential to global oil markets than the Strait of Hormuz. In 2024, nearly half of all global maritime trade transited the Strait of Malacca and the Taiwan Strait, another route contested under Beijing’s nine-dash line framework.
Hundreds of billions of dollars in technologies central to both the U.S. economy and its military pass through the South China Sea each year. The United States, the Philippines, and other allies have worked together to preserve freedom of navigation in those waters, backed by mutual defense agreements.
Beijing has enforced its claims aggressively before. During the Johnson South Reef Skirmish in March 1988, the Chinese People’s Liberation Army Navy opened fire on Vietnamese soldiers attempting to plant a flag on the reef, killing 64 of them. In more recent years, China’s Coast Guard has blasted Filipino fishermen in Philippine waters with heavy water cannons, endangering their vessels and leaving some injured.
The Seoul Defense Dialogue is built around the stated goals of global security cooperation and peace on the Korean Peninsula, and its attendance and profile have been expanding in recent years — a trajectory that the scene in the hall this week is unlikely to slow.
The State Department did not respond to a request for comment on the exchange.
The Philippine Department of National Defense also shared footage and images of Teodoro’s remarks from the conference on its official social media accounts.
Source: www.dailywire.com — https://www.dailywire.com/news/watch-u-s-ally-spars-with-china-in-defense-forum-showdown