Small steps, big vision for new NE Asian tripartite body

By Kim Young-jin

For years, the notion of a community in Northeast Asia has floated among policymakers and academics as a path to prosperity and stability. But for Korea, Japan and China, a long history of conflict and thorny politics has kept it just that _ a notion.

While the recent launch of the Trilateral Cooperation Secretariat among the sides has no explicit aim to establish such a community, its head says now is the time to create conditions for the idea to one day become reality. But the process must start with small steps.

“In the beginning we should begin humbly,” said Shin Bong-kil, secretary general of the secretariat during an interview at his office in downtown Seoul.

“But I also want to sell the concept of common prosperity and community in Northeast Asia. If we foster this, it could naturally assuage some of the difficult issues that exist among us.”

Proposed by President Lee Myung-bak during a trilateral summit in 2009, the agreement to launch the body was signed into effect last year. Benchmarking the corresponding body at ASEAN, it aims to bolster cooperation and make it more systematic.

Shin, a career diplomat who has served as minister to China and a secretary to the Korean Embassy in Japan, said his primary goal during his two-year term is to build infrastructure to support the hundreds of consultative measures and cooperative projects between the sides.

“We have a growing number of meetings, all with their own agendas. But until now there has been no center which can grasp all the facts,” he said.

The secretariat will create a database for all tripartite consultations as a shared resource as one of its first moves and support future meetings and increase their productivity with know-how.

It will also focus on key projects launched between the sides such as Campus Asia, a program intended to boost mobility of students and professors.

The steps may not grab headlines at first, but in a region where territorial disputes and differences over how to deal with a belligerent, nuclear-armed neighbor often dominate the agenda, Shin believes they can make a difference.

“The ASEAN secretariat began with very simple, technical procedures such as distributing memos. But now, it is organizing hundreds of meetings a year. As time goes by, naturally our functions and activities will expand,” he said.

But this is not to say that Shin, who was most recently Ambassador for International Economic Cooperation, won’t focus on the big picture as well. He said that during his tenure the secretariat would foster the vision of regional community through seminars and other means.

Building public support for such a vision would take some work as bitterness remains over a rocky history.

China dominated the region for centuries and backed North Korea in a bitter fratricidal war. Imperial Japan colonized the peninsula under the slogan of ``Greater Co-prosperous Sphere of East Asia,” attaching bad memories to the concept of integration.

Despite this, Shin said the existing robust economic cooperation and initial talks for a trilateral FTA put the neighbors in a better position than some might believe.

“The E.U. also began humbly _ the French and Germans were still enemies _ and now has become a strong community,” he pointed out, adding that an FTA would in effect create a “low level of economic integration.”

Shin said his career in diplomacy would also be a boon in forging understanding when relations hit a bump in the road.

“What’s really important for diplomats is to have an eye to see the others’ point of view. Whatever happens in China or Japan, you should have the capacity to understand their position. So I will do my job as a Northeast Asian, not only as a Korean,” he said.

He said the greatest stumbling block to greater cooperation and potential community remained history.

“Yes, our countries had very unfortunate experiences, and we are still competing with each other. So we need to start working on this vision of common prosperity. After all, we are all from the same region.”