Will the potential win of Lee Jae-Myung in the current race to the Blue House in Seoul hurt South Korea’s ties with Japan? Some apprehension are their ties might take “a significant step backwards.” Lee’s Democratic Party has traditionally been “inclined to hedge between China and the United States and refrain from antagonising” the communist nation. Lee may raise the issues related to the Korean victims during Japanese colonial rule. Japan’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party will not oblige.
There are apprehensions that the ties between the two nations might sour also on account of the absence of former US President Joe Biden from the scene. Biden had been instrumental in bringing South Korea and Japan together into a trilateral security alliance (the 2023 Camp David deal) with the United States. Current US President Donald J Trump is transactional. During his first term as president, he often accused South Korea and Japan of siphoning off American military resources. He even threatened to pull his troops from the region.
One, however, finds such apprehensions are hardly substantial. There is a near consensus across the South Korean foreign policy spectrum today to build on its past achievements in political, economic and technological sectors and take the nation forward. Lee is highly unlikely to disturb this consensus.
President Trump, too, is likely to favour the coming together of South Korea and Japan. He has to take into account that the aggressive North Korean armament programme poses a threat not only to South Korea and Japan, but also to the United States. The Trump presidency’s approach to the matter can be discerned in the recent teleconference that the US naval chief attended with his South Korean and Japanese counterparts to strengthen their cooperation against the North Korean threats.
More importantly, South Korea and Japan today are too interdependent economically as well as geo-strategically to drift from each other. South Korea sends more tourists to Japan than any nation except for China. Its tourism industry (worth $71.4 billion) benefits a lot from Japan. A potential South Korea-Japan-China Free Trade Agreement has already been in the works since 2013. Today, they may have to come together to respond jointly to the current tariff threat the US poses to them.
South Korea and Japan also need to act together to counter China’s growing aggressiveness in the region. Seoul must be well aware of how, in 2017, Beijing targeted a range of South Korea’s industries in retaliation for its decision to deploy a US missile defence system. According to an estimate, South Korea’s tourism industry suffered a loss of nearly $8 billion in the process.
One is sure South Block is keeping track of developments in South Korea and Japan and doing whatever it can to keep the two nations close to each other. India has had very friendly ties with both South Korea and Japan. New Delhi must use its status to boost South Korea-Japan ties. Doing so is in India’s Interest. With South Korea and Japan, India could create a coalition of democracies in the Asian region. Such a coalition is sure to be helpful in achieving the common objective of India, South Korea and Japan to foster “a free, open, inclusive and peaceful Indo-Pacific” and foil the aggressive designs of any authoritarian forces, including China, in the region. Such a coalition would help the three democracies in the region, as well as the much-needed reforming of our leading international institutions, including the UN Security Council, the International Monetary Fund, and the World Trade Organisation, for better global governance.
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