'Seoul-Tokyo conflict challenges US' East Asia policy by giving boost to China'

International relations scholars from home and abroad and South Korean government officials attend the first World Congress of Security Studies held at MND Convention in central Seoul, Aug. 26, the first day of the two-day forum. Yonhap

By Jung Da-min

Ongoing disputes centering on trade and security policies between South Korea and Japan, the key U.S. allies in Northeast Asia, are putting the U.S. leadership in a difficult position in its competition with China for regional hegemony, according to international relations professors who visited Seoul last week.

They were attending the first World Congress of Security Studies hosted by Korea National Defense University's Research Institute for National Security Affairs which brought hundreds of scholars and students to the MND Convention run by the Ministry of National Defense in central Seoul on Aug. 26 and 27 to share diverse views on security in East Asia.

Stephen Walt of Harvard University / Korea Times photo by Jung Da-min

Among the prominent scholars attending the two-day forum was Stephen M. Walt, an international relations professor at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, who delivered a keynote speech in a session dedicated to realists' perspectives on the security situation in East Asia.

According to Walt, the U.S. as the leading power in the international community has "sometimes attempted to take steps to slow or halt the rising power" of China. He said the United States is trying to limit China's ability to benefit from a certain course of events, while also persuading U.S. allies to go along with this effort.

He noted China benefits from the friction between Seoul and Tokyo amid its own deepening trade war with the U.S.

"Anything that undermines cooperation among America's allies in Asia … weakens the coalition that is helping to limit the Chinese influence," Walt said during an interview with The Korea Times on the sidelines of the forum.

He said Seoul's decision not to renew the General Security of Military Information Agreement (GSOMIA) following Japan's removal of South Korea from its list of countries receiving preferential treatment in trade procedures was unfortunate for the United States, adding the U.S. should help its two allies resolve the current differences and return to a closer level of cooperation.

"The United States should be playing a much more active role in alliance leadership throughout Asia. It means more time, more attention and more meetings with key officials here. I think that's going to happen over time and I believe it will happen soon," he said.

John Ikenberry of Princeton University / Korea Times photo by Jung Da-min

Another U.S. scholar John Ikenberry, a politics and international affairs professor at Princeton University's Department of Politics and Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, shared his liberalist view of the current security situation on the Korean Peninsula.

Unlike realists' perspective which focuses on the competition between the U.S. and China, liberalists' view is about how to "engage" China into the U.S.-led global order of liberal democracy that has existed since World War II. While Japan and South Korea picked up "the framework of the postwar liberal international order to make profound political and economic transitions," China remained "illiberal" with its autocratic regime, Ikenberry said, while the U.S. has pursued its liberal-oriented engagement policy toward China.

As a liberalist, Ikenberry noted the complex forms of "interdependence" and the constant action-reaction back-and-forth between countries. On the Seoul-Tokyo relationship, he said there are "very old, deeply rooted grievances and historical memory, dynamics that have never really been fully removed from the bilateral relationship."

The recently escalated tensions between South Korea and Japan stem from the differences in interpretation between the current administrations of the two countries of the 1965 Treaty on Basic Relations. Tokyo has said the South Korean Supreme Court's rulings last year that ordered Japanese companies Nippon Steel and Mitsubishi to compensate surviving South Korean victims of wartime forced labor during the 1910-45 Japanese occupation were in violation of the 1965 agreement.

"So, there are kind of two levels to the problem. One is old, submerged, deeply rooted historical issues and there is the contemporary political environment in both countries that makes it difficult to put those things behind them," Ikenberry told The Korea Times.

He said President Moon Jae-in's decision not to renew the GSOMIA with Japan was a "self-inflicted" decision as South Korea benefits from the intelligence pact as much as Japan does. He also said the Seoul-Tokyo conflict benefits China.

"I think it is a boost to China because China will always want to see democratic states on its borders divided rather than united," he said.

'Nobody benefits from Seoul-Tokyo conflict'

Other scholars at the forum, however, including Zhu Feng, executive director of Nanjing University's China Center for Collaborative Studies of South China Sea, said the possibility of China becoming the dominant power in Asia was overestimated. He said China with its vast territory has too many challenges in domestic politics including the conflict with Taiwan over its "One China" principle, whereby China insists Taiwan is an inalienable part of one China to be reunified one day.

The Chinese professor also said China will not be able to be the leading power without help from Japan and South Korea, which is highly unlikely considering the ties among the U.S., South Korea and Japan.

Keiji Nakatsuji of Ritsumeikan University

Another participant at the forum, Keiji Nakatsuji, an international relations professor at Ritsumeikan University in Kyoto, said he does not believe anyone would benefit from the "worst" relationship between South Korea and Japan because there are much more intricate webs of interests among surrounding countries on the issue of North Korea's denuclearization.

"In terms of denuclearization of North Korea, China does not want to have a nuclearized DPRK (Democratic People's Republic of Korea). So they can work together (on the denuclearization of North Korea)," Nakatsuji said. "Things are much more complex. I don't want to take the realists' side that China and Russia will benefit from this situation."

The Japanese professor also cautiously expressed an optimistic view on the Seoul-Tokyo conflict saying South Korea and Japan have been working in a "friendly manner" in efforts to denuclearize the North.

But he said he was disappointed at Seoul's recent decision not to renew the GSOMIA, as the agreement is an important component of the trilateral cooperation among the U.S., Japan and South Korea to control contingency situations related to North Korea's nuclear and missile threats.

"Maybe the South Korean government could have chosen other options to criticize Japan. … But (not renewing) the GSOMIA is a little too much," Nakatsuji said.

Following Seoul's decision on Aug. 22 not to renew the GSOMIA, the information-sharing pact is set to be terminated in November, 90 days after the Aug. 24 deadline for notifying Japan.

The South Korean government, however, has kept its doors open for negotiations with Tokyo, with Prime Minister Lee Nak-yon saying at the National Assembly on Aug. 27 that his country could reconsider its decision to end the GSOMIA if the Japanese government were to withdraw its "unjust measures" on South Korea, referring to Japan's trade restrictions against South Korea.

The invited speakers at the two-day security forum in Seoul also included Peter Katzenstein, the Walter S. Carpenter Chair of International Studies at Cornell University, who represented the constructivist perspective, and John Mueller, a political scientist and Senior Research Scientist at Ohio State University's Mershon Center, who shared his views on the North Korean nuclear issue.

John Mueller of Ohio State University, left, and Peter Katzenstein of Cornell University / Korea Times photo by Jung Da-min