It is something that many considered impossible: a historic meeting between Japan’s Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and South Korea’s President Yoon Suk-yeol.
Both leaders met this Friday with the president of the United States, Joe Biden, who has organized a summit of the three countries at the presidential retreat at Camp David (Maryland). Although tenuous, it is a diplomatic achievement for the American leader.
South Korea and Japan are neighbors and longtime allies of the United States, but have never been friends with each other.
Now, however, an increasingly assertive China has renewed US interest in East Asia. And it has brought together two countries that for decades have struggled to overcome deep historical grievances.
“The meeting at Camp David seems amazing to me,” Dennis Wilder wrote on the social network X, formerly Twitter. Wilder, a professor at Georgetown University, was responsible for managing relations between Japan and South Korea during the George W. Bush administration.
At the time, “we could barely get the South Korean and Japanese leaders to meet with us in the same room,” he said.
In recent months, Kishida and Yoon have taken tentative steps to resolve their animosity and strengthen ties with Washington. This once inconceivable alliance is driven by shared concerns, the biggest of which is China.
This is the first time foreign leaders have visited the Camp David presidential retreat since 2015 and, according to a White House spokesman, it is an attempt to “signal and demonstrate how seriously” Biden takes the relationship between Japan and South Korea.
“The Camp David summit is truly historic, unimaginable until now, because the Seoul-Tokyo relationship has always been plagued by historic disputes that marred both legs of the triangle,” says Duyeon Kim, of the Indo-Pacific Security Program at the Center. for New American Security, based in Seoul.
“This is an extremely rare opportunity for all three countries to push their vision to the next level. They must seize it and move forward boldly even on ambitious issues before presidential election cycles test or put pressure on the durability of their commitments,” pointed.
Why has it taken so long to happen?
For starters, the wounds are old.
Some may describe the two countries as “enemies,” but that’s too hackneyed a term to describe the deep grief among South Koreans, including the thousands of so-called “comfort women” who were kidnapped and used as sex slaves by the Japanese military. during World War II.
South Koreans believe that the Japanese never properly apologized for colonizing the Korean Peninsula between 1910 and 1945.. However, Tokyo argued that he had atoned for his “historical sins” in various treaties.
Any détente has always been fragile, almost like a game of Jenga. Even when the East Asian bloc seemed solid, one wrong move could bring down the entire building.
In 2018, a lengthy court case in Seoul over Japan’s use of forced labor during World War II sparked a trade dispute that plunged relations between the neighbors to their lowest level since the 1960s.
But recent progress has been made, including a historic meeting in March, opening a new window of opportunity for Washington.
common threats
There is good reason for the two new governments to put aside their differences, even at the cost of political capital on the home front.
This is, after all, the age of pragmatic politics, and both countries see a greater threat looming.
China’s assertive stance in Asia has alarmed its neighbors.
Beijing claims Taiwan, a democratically governed island, and has not ruled out using force to “unify” it with the mainland. The incursions into Taiwanese airspace and now the so-called “new normal” in that area is characterized by large military exercises.
Then there’s North Korea, which has conducted more than 100 weapons tests since early 2022, including firing missiles at Japan.
The war in Ukraine has also led many countries, including South Korea and Japan, to prioritize national security.
All of this appears to have helped Biden win where his predecessors in Washington had failed.
“This marks an important milestone in the history of the trilateral relationship that has moved in fits and starts over the past three decades,” said Andrew Yeo, who holds the SK-Korea Foundation think tank at the Brookings Institution, a Washington-based think tank.
He says the three parties will try to “consolidate the gains” they have made in the past year, “while building momentum… to address a variety of security challenges in Northeast Asia and the Indo-Pacific region.”
That would mean signing agreements on defense, diplomacy and technology. And in that direction they advanced this Friday.
The leaders agreed to hold regular military exercises, set up a new three-way crisis hotline, and most importantly, pledged to meet once a year.
Washington’s goal is to establish long-term ties that will continue even after the three leaders leave office.
“Biden, Yoon and Kishida have an opportunity to make an even bigger story that lasts beyond a historic meeting at Camp David,” Duyeon Kim said.
“Their respective governments will need to implement their joint vision proactively and beyond their mandates because the Seoul-Tokyo relationship will continue to see its ups and downs.
If a far-left South Korean president and a far-right Japanese leader are elected in their next cycles, then either one of them could derail all the meaningful and hard work that Biden, Yoon, and Kishida are doing right now.”
And therein lies the challenge.
A lasting rapprochement?
Kurt Campbell, deputy assistant to President Biden and coordinator of Indo-Pacific affairs, praised the “political courage” of Kishida and Yoon, calling it “an impressive type of diplomacy.”
But a change in leadership could mean a change in position.
“Tensions that run deep, particularly in South Korea due to past historical animosities related to colonization by Japan, do not go away overnight, and we will likely continue to see diplomatic spats erupt, as happened a couple of years ago. weeks ago when the Japanese Defense Ministry claimed Dokdo (Takeshima Islands) as their own in its national security strategy,” said Andrew Yeo.
“The relatively low approval ratings for Kishida and Yoon at home may limit the amount of diplomatic capital the two leaders could invest in Korea-Japan relations. I also believe that at some point the two sides, and Japan in particular, will need to a more comprehensive review and acknowledgment of its colonial past in Korea and elsewhere”.
Although some analysts pointed to the possibility that Japan and South Korea did not want to go as far as Biden in criticizing China, fearing a backlash. However, in the joint statement issued at Camp David, the three leaders have accused China of dangerous and aggressive behavior in the South China Sea.
On the other hand, agreements involving economic measures may be more difficult to secure than agreements on national security.
The tensions between the United States and China, especially the economic restrictions, have come at a cost for both South Korea and Japan.
China is a key trading partner for both. And companies in Seoul and Tokyo, such as Samsung and Nissan, are heavily dependent on Chinese workers and consumers.
Beijing made public its dissatisfaction with the summit. He sees it as yet another attempt by the US to “contain” its influence, no matter how much the White House denies it, and has called it a “mini-NATO”, a characterization that was rejected by the US National Security Adviser. the White House, Jake Sullivan.
In the months leading up to Friday’s meeting, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi urged South Korea and Japan to work with Beijing to “revitalize East Asia.”
In July, in a video that has now been widely shared, he made an unusually forceful appeal: “No matter how blond you dye your hair or how sharp you shape your nose, you can never become a European or an American, you can never become a Westerner. We must know where our roots are,” he said.
While Biden has focused, perhaps successfully, on building defense alliances in Asia, he has left little room for engagement with Beijing and Pyongyang.
There were signs that this was changing, with a series of recent visits to Beijing by top US officials: Secretary of State Anthony Blinken, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and US Special Envoy for Climate John Kerry. .
There are also reports that Washington has approached North Korean leader Kim Jong-un with an offer of high-level talks “without preconditions.”
But time is running out due to the start of another election cycle in the United States.
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BBC-NEWS-SRC: https://www.bbc.com/mundo/articles/cp405zek108o, IMPORTING DATE: 2023-08-18 22:40:10
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