hankyoreh

Oct. 16. (Yonhap News)

One of the major accomplishments cited by the Blue House from President Park Geun-hye’s recent summit with US President Barack Obama was putting to rest Washington’s concerns that Seoul has become too close to Beijing.

Indeed, Obama declared at a joint press conference after the summit on Oct. 16 that the US “want[s] South Korea to have a strong relationship with China.” Blue House senior foreign relations and national security secretary Ju Chul-ki said on Oct. 18 that the “affirmation of firm support” for South Korea-China relations was “very significant.”

But Obama’s actual statement was closer to diplomatic rhetoric -- an attempt to stress the strong state of the South Korea-US alliance while recognizing Park’s awkward position.

The real message Obama wanted to send was rather different.

“The only thing I asked President Park is that we want China to observe international regulations and laws,” Obama said. “And where they fail to do so, we expect the Republic of Korea to speak out on that, just as we do.”

The remarks read strongly as a clear call for South Korea to close ranks with the US in the event of a conflict between Washington and Beijing.

It‘s also an open call for Seoul to join in pressuring Beijing amid an intense conflict between the US and China over the latter’s efforts to artificially widen one of the Spratley (Nansha) Islands and set up a military base there. Speaking at the ASEAN Regional Forum in August, South Korean Minister of Foreign Affairs Yun Byung-se voiced “concerns about the recent situation in the South China Sea.” His remarks were seen as Seoul shifting more toward pressuring Beijing after previously remaining neutral on the issue and insisting that China and the Southeast Asian nations quarreling with it on the issue should work on honoring a previous agreed-on declaration of conduct (DOC) and establishing a new code of conduct (COC). With his remarks, Obama called for even more assertive and aggressive forms of pressure on China.

While he was at it, Obama also offered a more direct sense of Washington’s sentiments.

“Obviously, given the size of China right there on your doorstep, if they’re able to act with impunity and ignore rules whenever they please, that’s not going to be good for you -- whether that’s on economic issues or security issues,” he said at one point. The remarks read as a warning couched as “advice,” suggesting Seoul would do well to align itself strategically with Washington instead of Beijing.

Indeed, rather than scoring a diplomatic success by allaying US concerns about Seoul being too close to China, Park may have come away from the summit facing the thorny diplomatic question of how to answer Obama‘s calls for Seoul to fall in line.

A greater danger still was Park’s vacillation during her visit. During the post-summit joint press conference and a speech and Q&A session at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), Park described South Korea as a key partner in Washington’s “rebalancing Asia” strategy and insisted that a unified Korea would be a “midwife for peace.” Park also said it was “time now to expand [the alliance’s] history of miracles to all of the peninsula.”

The framework was a strategy for unification through expansion of the South Korea-US alliance. By way of analogy, that would mean USFK extending to China‘s very doorstep on its North Korean border at the Yalu (Amnok) and Tumen (Duman) Rivers -- something Beijing would never tolerate. Her remarks stand a good chance of being taken by Pyongyang as an overt push for “unification by absorption,” and by Beijing as a signal that Seoul plans to side itself firmly with Washington.

“These remarks by President Park are incompatible with the statements she made about ’cooperating with China on the peaceful reunification of the Korean Peninsula’ after meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping last month,” said one former senior government official.

“Things are now in a place where China is going to have to question the sincerity of the Park administration’s diplomatic strategy of fostering the US alliance and relations with China simultaneously,” the former official observed.

By Lee Je-hun and Choi Hye-jung, staff reporters