Japan, China and the South Korea are easily the three most important local powers in East Asia. The United States has crucial economic ties with all of those countries, and has military alliances with both Japan and South Korea. Worries now surround those linkages, because bilateral tensions have grown along all sides of the regional triangle.
Until the early 1990s, China’s relations with South Korea were simple and hostile. Beijing was Communist North Korea’s principal ally, and Seoul regarded China as a dangerous adversary. With the end of the Cold War, the relationship changed dramatically. Not only did Beijing recognize the South Korean government for the first time, but trade ties began to surge. By the early years of the 21st century, relations between South Korea and China had warmed to the point that US officials worried about Beijing’s growing diplomatic and economic influence in Seoul. On such issues as dealing with North Korea’s nuclear program, South Korean policy often seemed closer to China’s position than America’s.
That Sino-Korean rapprochement experienced a great chill, however, in 2010 when, in the space of eight months, North Korean forces sank the South Korean naval vessel Cheonan and shelled the island of Yeonpyeong. Seoul was furious that Beijing refused to condemn Pyongyang’s acts of aggression, much less support substantive sanctions against the rogue regime. Relations have slowly healed, and the vigorous bilateral trade has resumed its trajectory, but South Korean officials as well as the South Korean public continue to view China with some wariness. The chill in the relationship has not entirely dissipated.
But Sino-Korean relations are in excellent shape compared to relations between South Korea and Japan, and especially between China and Japan.
South Koreans still resent their society’s humiliating experience as a Japanese colony in the first half of the 20th century, and suspicions about Tokyo’s future intentions are never far below the surface. South Korean naval leaders, for example, have ambitions to build a robust submarine fleet, even though Seoul’s only military adversary, North Korea, has negligible naval capabilities. South Korean military leaders privately admit that such a buildup is intended to deter Japan.
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