(My latest for Asia Times) South Korea makes waves with China pacts

South Korea makes waves with China pacts
A revelation that South Korea is forging military pacts with China days after ditching a deal with former colonial ruler Japan smacks more of an attempt to dodge political flak than to play a balancer's role in relations as North Korea provokes alarm. A deal with China, though it stands slim chance of success over Pyongyang's objections, also looks like a snub to American designs. - Kosuke Takahashi (May 25, '12)

South Korea makes waves with China pactsBy Kosuke Takahashi

TOKYO - Alarmed at North Korea's unstoppable nuclear and missile development programs, South Korea, Japan and the United States seem to have elevated trilateral security cooperation.

But that's only on the surface. Just like ducks that appear calm above the water but are paddling furiously, relations between the three countries on the subject of how to handle China and North Korea are generating a lot of unseen turbulence.

Earlier this week, South Korea abruptly announced it was negotiating a military agreement with China, a fierce enemy during the 1950-1953 Korean War and North Korea's long-time ally. What surprised the media was the fact this move came just days after Seoul suspended the signing of a similar military pact with Tokyo.

Is Seoul just trying to get closer to its largest trade partner China? Or by shifting its axis of cooperation from Tokyo to Beijing, is it aiming to play a "balancer's role" between Japan and China, a position that former South Korean president Roh Moo-hyun used to advocate?

"South Korea's left-wing opposition parties and groups have been attacking the Lee Myung-bak administration on forging military pacts with the former colonial ruler Japan so far," Hideshi Takesada, a professor at Yonsei University of South Korea, told Asia Times Online. "So by bringing up the subject of a military pact with China, it wants to say 'Hey, we are not negotiating only with Japan, but also with many nations such as China.' It tries to dodge a public backlash that military pacts with Japan have caused."

Takesada pointed out that Lee had already become a lame duck ahead of the presidential election in December and that he was losing his centripetal force, thus pandering to populist policy measures.

Takesada, a former executive director of the National Institute for Defense Studies in Tokyo, the Japanese Ministry of Defense's think-tank, sees almost no chance that Seoul could make a military deal with China because this would provoke a fierce backlash from Pyongyang.

"From South Korea's perspective, such an attempt is to defuse China's concerns that the increased military cooperation with Japan might work as a containment against China," said Hyon Jooyoo, an assistant professor in the Department of Political Science at Trinity University in San Antonio of Texas. "It seems to me that South Korea tries to find a middle ground between Japan and China by forming a similar contract with Beijing."

"Increasing military cooperation with Japan is significant to Seoul but South Korea should not make it antagonize China," Hyon said while visiting Keio University in Tokyo on Wednesday.

South Korea and Japan have reached the final stages of talks on two agreements: an Acquisition and Cross Servicing Agreement (ACSA) and general security of Military Information Agreement (GSOMIA). The ACSA would allow exchange of fuel supplies or vehicles during United Nations peacekeeping or disaster relief operations. The GSOMIA would establish a bilateral exchange of sensitive military information such as that regarding North Korea's weapons of mass destruction, including its nuclear program.

Military experts say that South Korea's military pacts with China, even if realized, would rank a notch lower than its military accords with Japan, as they may limit the scope of cooperation between Seoul and Beijing.

In China's rise, Seoul is beginning to see more economic and diplomatic opportunities than military threats.

"Thinking about North Korea, China is very, very important for Seoul," a senior South Korean diplomat told Asia Times Online.

For left-leaning political elites in Seoul, China is a key partner to form a bridge between them and Pyongyang. On the other hand, for conservative South Korean leaders, China is a strategic collaborator to pre-empt North Korea's military and diplomatic provocations.

Discord between the US and South Korea
It's true that tightening bilateral security ties with Tokyo is a very sensitive topic given latent anti-Japanese sentiment among South Koreans regarding the 1910-1945 colonial rule of the Korean Peninsula. But it is the US, which has urged Japan and South Korea, its strongest allies in the Asia-Pacific region, to create unprecedented military pacts for sharing information and equipment.

In December 2010, Mike Mullen, serving as the chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, stressed the significance of trilateral cooperation between the US, Japan and South Korea at a press conference in Tokyo. Mullen said North Korea's shelling of a South Korean island a few weeks early, which killed two troops and two civilians, had created a "real sense of urgency".

Even so, South Korea has not fully met the US request. Instead, why is it seeking a military agreement with China, especially when Washington seems to have formed the US-led alliance of encirclement against Beijing, involving Japan, Australia and the Philippines?

Yonsei University's Takesada said that a recent visit by US officials to Pyongyang, without letting Seoul know of it, may have hurt South Korean officials' feelings.

According to South Korea's Chosun Ilbo newspaper, a US Air Force Boeing 737 flew from Guam to Pyongyang with the officials on April 7, six days before North Korea's April 13 long-range rocket launch in an apparent bid to halt the test.

The newspaper said the aircraft passed through South Korean airspace and might have been carrying Sydney Seiler, a National Security Council adviser to President Barack Obama, and Joseph DeTrani, director of the National Counter-Proliferation Center.

The US government did not notify South Korea's military air traffic controllers of the flight. As a result, the controllers initially had trouble identifying the aircraft and eventually found it was heading to the North, according to a report last week by Reset KBS, an online broadcasting channel.

"Seoul should have got indignant at the US, as it felt a loss of face because of this secret deal between the US and North Korea," Takesada said.

US State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland on May 22 did not deny the news report, saying "we don't have any comment on that report at all".

A report from Pyongyang on the same day was more bothersome to the State Department.

North Korea's Rondog Sinmun reported, "Several weeks ago, we informed the US side of the fact that we are restraining ourselves in real actions though we are no longer bound to the February 29 DPRK-[Democratic People's Republic of Korea]-US agreement, taking the concerns voiced by the US into consideration for the purpose of ensuring the peace and stability of the Korean Peninsula necessary for focusing every effort on the peaceful development."

"From the beginning, we did not envisage such a military measure as a nuclear test as we planned to launch a scientific and technical satellite for peaceful purposes," it said.

If North Korea's claim is true, the US has not publicized this fact at all, just stressing North Korea's provocations by violating UN resolutions in the past few months.

There is a possibility that the Obama administration will go for unilateralism to seek a rare foreign policy success concerning North Korea in its final months in office before the US presidential election in November. This would undoubtedly give South Korea and Japan the chills.

Kosuke Takahashi is a Tokyo-based Japanese journalist. His twitter is @TakahashiKosuke

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