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Challenges and Tasks Facing ROK-China-Japan Tripartite Cooperation: Viewed From Recent Historical Controversies and Nationalism
Geung Chan, Bae
Professor, IFANS
I. Overview
The ROK-China-Japan trilateral intergovernmental cooperation system has graduated the budding phase and has advanced to the early stages of institutionalization. ROK-China-Japan summits, which first began as an informal gathering in 1999, have become an annual practice since then. The recent launch of the “Three-Party Committee of the ROK, China, and Japan” has further formalized and institutionalized the tripartite intergovernmental cooperation.
Forming the backdrop to the maturing ROK-China-Japan cooperation is, above all, the urgency of an established consultation channel for the three Northeast Asian nations within the ASEAN+3 cooperation system, which the ASEAN took the lead in inaugurating and operating since 1997. While 10 Southeast Asian nations formed one regional grouping called the ASEAN, the three Northeast Asian nations have lacked and therefore perceived the need for a corresponding framework of cooperation. Increasing economic interdependence among the ROK, China, and Japan is another main catalyst to tripartite cooperation among the three Northeast Asian countries. China has speedily taken the place of Korea’s top investment destination and largest export market recently. Japan is China’s largest trading partner, and China has emerged as Japan’s second major trading partner. In 2003, exports among the three countries amounted to 22.2 percent of their total export amounts combined. Moreover, key security issues such as the North Korean nuclear program have increased the demand for intra-regional dialogue, and transnational issues such as narcotics, the environment, and terrorism have prompted the need for joint responses. These, coupled with a sudden rise in cultural and personnel exchanges among the three countries, are additional factors expediting ROK-China-Japan cooperation.
Despite such strides toward closer ties, Korea, China, and Japan have been embroiled in conflict and controversy since the dawn of 2004 over historical and territorial issues, and the situation is only worsening. ROK-China-Japan territorial disputes and historical debates cast a shadow over the future of trilateral cooperation. Some examples include the Japanese prime minister’s surprise visit to the Yasukuni Shrine in January 2003 and China’s shunning of bilateral summit talks with Japan in response; a Japanese patrol boat’s firing of a water cannon at those Chinese activists who attempted to land on the Diaoyu Islands; the Tokyo government’s official protest against the Seoul government’s issuance of Tok Islet(Tokdo) The easternmost islet in the East Sea
postage stamps; and the Korean people’s expression of anger at China’s “Northeast Asia Project,” a study designed to substantiate that the ancient kingdom of Koguryo One of the kingdoms in Korea’s “Age of the Three Kingdoms,” Koguryo emerged around the time of Christ and fell in AD 668. Koguryo ranged over northern Korea and southern Manchuria.
is an integral part of China. The Northeast Asia Project controversy, in particular, marks a starting point for a historical debate between Korea and China―a hitherto nonexistent variable which is likely to raise uncertainties in future ROK-China relations. These territorial disputes and historical controversies are the most onerous hurdles to ROK-China-Japan trilateral cooperation, for they have a direct bearing on nationalism, which is commonly inherent in all three Northeast Asian neighbors, and especially on the China-Japan struggle for regional hegemony.
The foremost task to facilitating smooth cooperation among Korea, China, and Japan, therefore, is to overcome territorial and historical issues that are grounded in exclusive, self-centered nationalism. The challenge these issues pose, however, is that they cannot by any means be resolved completely through government-level diplomatic negotiations or international law alone; ultimately, by nature, they will be hammered out only when the mature civil societies of the three countries can actively take part in the problem-solving process in a forward-leaning and open-minded fashion. The distorted Japanese history textbooks should serve as a good reminder. Most leading middle schools in Japan were discouraged from using the problematic textbooks―a fruit of Korean and Japanese civic groups’ concerted efforts rather than the two governments’ diplomatic success.
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