hankyoreh

President-elect Yoon Suk-yeol addresses a presidential transition committee workshop held at the Seoul Startup Hub in Mapo District, Seoul, on March 26. (Yonhap News)

As the next South Korean administration prepares to assume power, Seoul faces the vexing question of how to respond to Washington and Tokyo’s proposal for joint military exercises. Trilateral exercises could be perceived not only inside South Korea but also in other countries in Northeast Asia — including North Korea, China and Russia — as a strategic move aimed at easing a long-standing taboo over South Korea, the US and Japan moving beyond cooperation on foreign policy and national security toward a trilateral military alliance.

Well-positioned diplomatic sources told the Hankyoreh that the Moon administration is sticking to its rejection of trilateral military exercises because of domestic political ramifications, as well as strategic considerations in foreign policy and national security.

In terms of its foreign policy and national security strategy, the Moon administration has reached the conclusion that proceeding with trilateral military exercises would be very likely to incite Cold War-level hostility and conflict in Northeast Asia between South Korea, the US and Japan on the one hand and North Korea, China and Russia on the other.

“Trilateral military exercises on the west coast of the Korean Peninsula would provoke pushback from China, while exercises on the east coast would provoke pushback from Russia. By holding such exercises, Korea would run a major risk of getting entangled in a military conflict with China and Russia and seriously curtailing its own diplomatic options,” a senior diplomatic source told the Hankyoreh.

A second factor limiting the Korean government’s options is Koreans’ intense aversion to joint military exercises with the Japan Self-Defense Forces (JSDF) — an aversion that’s rooted in Japan’s 36-year-long colonial occupation of Korea in the early 20th century.

Senior diplomatic sources noted that joint exercises with the JSDF are “a very sensitive question, historically speaking,” that involve not only considerations of foreign policy and national security but also the impact on domestic politics.

That is why neither the Moon administration nor any previous South Korean administration has ever held joint military exercises with the JSDF in waters off the Korean Peninsula, not even during the Cold War.

“The Japanese are more eager for trilateral military exercises than the US. The Japanese appear to be trying to use North Korea as a pretext for drawing South Korea into an axis of antagonism and conflict between the US and Japan on one side and China and Russia on the other,” said a senior diplomatic source.

The question is what Korea’s next administration will do after Yoon Suk-yeol is inaugurated as president on May 10.

During his presidential campaign, Yoon stressed revitalizing national security cooperation with the US and Japan in an article that ran in Foreign Affairs, the American foreign policy and national security journal.

Furthermore, one of the people that Yoon selected for his presidential transition committee’s foreign policy and national security subcommittee is Kim Tae-hyo, who advised former President Lee Myung-bak on those matters. Kim once published a paper in which he argued that “treating Japanese intervention in a war on the Korean Peninsula as a foregone conclusion would have the effect of maximizing ongoing deterrence against North Korea.”

Yoon himself created a stir during the second televised presidential debate on Feb. 25 when he noted that a trilateral alliance with the US and Japan would allow for the JSDF to enter the Korean Peninsula in the event of a war, even if that was not the primary purpose of the alliance.

The presidential transition committee was noncommittal in its response to the idea of trilateral military exercises.

“Trilateral military exercises would have to be considered carefully because they would go beyond national security cooperation to military cooperation,” a member of the foreign policy and national security subcommittee said.

“We can cooperate on matters such as sharing information, but military exercises aren’t likely even in the future,” another member of the transition committee said.

By Lee Je-hun, senior staff writer; Seo Young-ji, staff reporter

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