Japanese Minister of Foreign Affairs Takeshi Iwaya met with his Chinese counterpart, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅), in Beijing on Wednesday last week. To Japan, this was directly related to the high likelihood of South Korea’s left-leaning Democratic Party candidate Lee Jae-myung winning South Korea’s probable presidential election this year. His win would have little if any direct impact on Taiwan.
South Korea’s political right holds a friendlier view of Japan, while its political left has a degree of enmity toward Japan. This is clearly shown in the attitudes toward Japan of former South Korean president Moon Jae-in and the suspended President Yoon Suk-yeol. Yoon’s friendliness toward Tokyo was supported by reliance on intelligence cooperation in military affairs, and gained the endorsement of South Korea’s chaebol conglomerate business empires. After Yoon’s inauguration, he led an economic entourage on an official visit to Japan, with former Samsung Electronics Corp executive chairman Jay Y. Lee and Hyundai Motor Group executive chairman Chung Eui-sun in attendance.
After Yoon met with then-Japanese prime minister Fumio Kishida, South Korean tourists flocked to Japan, breaking a 10-year record and surging past the number of Chinese visitors.
Koreanic and Japonic language and cultural families have millennia-old ties, and the two peoples have long had close relations and contact. Early in Japan’s history, many peoples from the Korean Peninsula and even the Korean royal family migrated to Japan, marrying into Japan’s aristocracy and helping to create a settled agrarian society.
Fast-forward to modern history, and the two lands have enjoyed much the same technology and capital. Former Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe led Japan for more than a decade, during which diplomatic relations with South Korea were largely disregarded, a situation that only got worse during Moon’s administration. China was able to replace South Korea in export trade and became the largest supplier of Japan’s foreign labor pool.
It is good that Japan’s relations with South Korea could continue following Yoon’s ousting. However, because of his short-lived declaration of martial law, Yoon, as well as the subsequent acting president, Han Duck-soo, were impeached. Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba views the Yoon government as being on its way out.
It is unknown whether relations would return to past enmities. South Korea’s political left and Japan’s political right could force bilateral ties to nosedive. Both countries are unable to completely sever ties, but Japan has no real love for China. China has little to offer Japan other than being a source of foreign laborers and tourism, but these are viewed as “following in South Korea’s shadow in opposing Japan.”
If China-Japan ties warm up, Taiwan would need to make greater overtures toward South Korea. Even if Lee Jae-myung would lead South Korea closer to North Korea and China, doing so would not be a huge issue for Taiwan, as South Korea has had a decade of experience in its government handling bumpy scenarios. Its left and right-wing politicians would not be fooled.
Taiwan-South Korea ties rely on industrial and political connections to reduce blowback from improvements in Japan-China relations. The government should aid the development of markets and political connections with South Korea’s ethnic Chinese community, related civic groups and hometown associations.
In doing so, Taiwan could collect intelligence on these groups’ pro-Beijing penetration to figure out a way to effectively grow ties with South Korea.
Wang Wen-sheng is a retired political operations officer and doctoral candidate researching the history of Australia and New Zealand’s ties with Oceania.
Translated by Tim Smith
As strategic tensions escalate across the vast Indo-Pacific region, Taiwan has emerged as more than a potential flashpoint. It is the fulcrum upon which the credibility of the evolving American-led strategy of integrated deterrence now rests. How the US and regional powers like Japan respond to Taiwan’s defense, and how credible the deterrent against Chinese aggression proves to be, will profoundly shape the Indo-Pacific security architecture for years to come. A successful defense of Taiwan through strengthened deterrence in the Indo-Pacific would enhance the credibility of the US-led alliance system and underpin America’s global preeminence, while a failure of integrated deterrence would
It is being said every second day: The ongoing recall campaign in Taiwan — where citizens are trying to collect enough signatures to trigger re-elections for a number of Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) legislators — is orchestrated by the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), or even President William Lai (賴清德) himself. The KMT makes the claim, and foreign media and analysts repeat it. However, they never show any proof — because there is not any. It is alarming how easily academics, journalists and experts toss around claims that amount to accusing a democratic government of conspiracy — without a shred of evidence. These
The Executive Yuan recently revised a page of its Web site on ethnic groups in Taiwan, replacing the term “Han” (漢族) with “the rest of the population.” The page, which was updated on March 24, describes the composition of Taiwan’s registered households as indigenous (2.5 percent), foreign origin (1.2 percent) and the rest of the population (96.2 percent). The change was picked up by a social media user and amplified by local media, sparking heated discussion over the weekend. The pan-blue and pro-China camp called it a politically motivated desinicization attempt to obscure the Han Chinese ethnicity of most Taiwanese.
On Wednesday last week, the Rossiyskaya Gazeta published an article by Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) asserting the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) territorial claim over Taiwan effective 1945, predicated upon instruments such as the 1943 Cairo Declaration and the 1945 Potsdam Proclamation. The article further contended that this de jure and de facto status was subsequently reaffirmed by UN General Assembly Resolution 2758 of 1971. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs promptly issued a statement categorically repudiating these assertions. In addition to the reasons put forward by the ministry, I believe that China’s assertions are open to questions in international
RSS