Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi on Friday last week became the first leader in Japan’s postwar history to publicly declare that a Chinese attack on Taiwan would threaten Japan’s survival. Based on that statement, Japan could justify exercising its right to self-defense in providing direct support to Taiwan in the event of a Taiwan contingency.
In South Korea, the tone is strikingly different. In a Time magazine interview published on May 29, then-South Korean presidential candidate Lee Jae-myung was asked whether he would help defend Taiwan if China invaded. He gave what Time called a “cryptic” response: “I will think about that answer when aliens are about to invade the Earth.”
Now as president, Lee continues to emphasize national-interest-centered pragmatic diplomacy, prioritizing maneuverability amid US-China strategic rivalry.
Some attribute Seoul’s reticence to its preoccupation with the North Korean threat. Yet Lee’s progressive government favors engagement over confrontation with Pyongyang, making the North Korea factor less decisive than many assume.
Seoul’s restraint runs deeper, rooted in a reluctance, and perhaps a willful blindness, to take sides. It avoids asking how a Taiwan conflict might pull it in — or how US forces in South Korea would respond. That silence is not prudence; it is denial, and denial in this region breeds miscalculation.
Not just Japan, but also South Korea, needs absolute deterrence in the Taiwan Strait. A Taiwan contingency would be existential for South Korea. Geographically, the capital, Seoul, lies closer to Taiwan than Tokyo. Economically, South Korea’s prosperity is inseparable from the maritime stability surrounding Taiwan. More than 90 percent of South Korea’s maritime trade volume transits the Taiwan Strait and the South China Sea.
A Bloomberg Economics analysis released in January last year forecast that a war in the Taiwan Strait would slash global GDP by 10 percent — with Taiwan facing a 40 percent drop, China 16.7 percent, Japan 13.5 percent, the US 6.7 percent and South Korea 23.3 percent, the second-worst after Taiwan. Simply put, a conflict in the Strait would devastate South Korea’s economy even if it did not fire a single shot.
South Korea cannot afford to treat stability in the Taiwan Strait as a distant concern. If Seoul stays silent, it might lead Beijing to believe it could invade Taiwan without facing any response from South Korea — a contrast to Japan’s growing resolve.
Japan has drawn its line; South Korea hesitates behind ambiguity. However, geography and economics leave Seoul no room for illusion: A Taiwan contingency would be a South Korea contingency. The choice is between preparedness and peril.
Alan Jeong is a student at Georgetown University in Washington.
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