hankyoreh

senior staff writer

Strong concerns and disappointment — that just about sums up the US government’s response to the Moon administration’s announcement that South Korea will be pulling out of its intelligence-sharing agreement with Japan, known as the General Security of Military Information Agreement (GSOMIA). The term “disappointment” does seem a little strong for diplomatic language used about an ally, but considering that the US had communicated through several channels that it hoped GSOMIA would be extended, that word choice is somewhat understandable. Even Kim Hyun-chong, second deputy chief of the Blue House’s National Security Office, said he sees the US’ disappointment as “only natural.”

What’s harder to understand is the US State Department’s statement that the GSOMIA decision reflects “a serious misapprehension on the part of the Moon administration regarding the serious security challenges we face in Northeast Asia.” That implies that the South Korean government was speaking out of ignorance when it said that the GSOMIA decision is not in the national interest. These remarks echo the statement by Japan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs that the South Korean decision “completely misunderstands the security environment in the region.” It’s astonishing to think that two allies could hold such wildly diverging opinions about a threat.

The strength of an alliance can vary from time to time, and two parties can cooperate without being in complete agreement. Such relationships permit the occasional squabble or misstep. But for such an alliance to be sustained, the stronger party must ensure that alliance benefits are distributed between the various members and take steps to ensure that cooperation continues. The fact that South Korea and Japan’s dispute over how to reckon with their colonial legacy has blown up, with Japan dropping South Korea from its white list of trusted trading partners and South Korea announcing its withdrawal from GSOMIA, signifies that the US has been unable to, or chosen not to, exercise that kind of leadership.

From the very beginning, South Korea and Japan have been strange bedfellows in the US’ scheme for trilateral security cooperation. It’s no stretch to say that it was unnatural for the US to yoke together South Korea and Japan, given their history of conflict. For such a partnership to be maintained, those two countries must refrain from asking questions about their past or digging too deep. That’s also why the US pushed for a “final and irreversible solution” to the comfort women issue during the presidency of Park Geun-hye. By engineering the conclusion of GSOMIA the following year, the US strengthened the bonds between the two countries. Until that point, we can see American leadership as having played some kind of role in South Korea-Japan relations.

But after Donald Trump became president of the US, American leadership dried up. Trump’s emphasis on “America first” caused the value of alliances in many parts of the world to plummet. Rather than complimenting the South Korea-US alliance, Trump has grumbled about the money being spent on maintaining the American troop presence there and on carrying out joint military exercises. Trump has disregarded Japan’s attempt to revise its “peace constitution” and its movement down the road toward militarism. Japan’s military expansion recalls its history of aggression, which cannot coexist with friendly relations with South Korea. At the very least, there are already indications that trilateral security cooperation among South Korea, Japan, and the US is coming undone.

The US State Department’s comment about “the serious security challenges we face in Northeast Asia” appears to be a reference to China’s growing influence and its stronger military. This perspective isn’t wrong, considering that China’s rise has created fissures in the US-led order in the region. China is attempting to alter the existing order in Northeast Asia, and that clashes with American interests. The two countries’ dispute has led to a competition to recruit countries in the region to their respective camps.

The problem is that the countries in the region — especially South Korea and Japan — have their own complex interests, which prevent them from fitting neatly into the China-US alignment. Furthermore, the power gap between them is narrower than ever before; in some areas, a power transition is underway that’s likely to flip their relative positions. Since all the players have assets that can alter geopolitical dynamics or affect its direction, the current changes in Northeast Asia should be seen as multifaceted.

Such complexity is behind the conflict in South Korea and Japan’s bilateral relations. South Korea seeks to build a permanent peace regime on the Korean Peninsula by improving inter-Korean relations and through cooperation with China and the US. Japan seeks to join the US’ Indo-Pacific Strategy, aimed at containing China, while throwing off the shackles of its peace constitution and becoming a military power. South Korea-Japan relations have been stranded in that process, and their exact coordinates remain unknown. It’s time for the US to exert its leadership in a more sophisticated manner, a manner that accounts for the conflicting interests in its Northeast Asian alliances.

By Yoo Kang-moon, senior staff writer

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