Earlier this year, The Strategy Bridge asked university and professional military education students to participate in our fifth annual writing contest by sending us their thoughts on strategy.

Now, we are pleased to present the second-place winner, from Jonathan Dixon, a recent graduate of the U.S. National War College in Washington, D.C.

Constraints in Strategic Planning

As the great power competition heats up, the United States finds itself more constrained in its ability to pursue grand strategies than at any other point this century. Domestically, America will face an extended economic fallout from the COVID pandemic, renewed concerns over its rising budget deficits, and an audience tired of foreign adventures.[1] Abroad, its unique system of security alliances faces challenges as Washington attempts to shift the burden of maintaining the liberal international order onto its partners. These trends are most acute in East Asia, where the U.S. is at risk of losing the region to a Chinese sphere of influence. Expectations that Japan and the Republic of Korea (ROK) could work together to develop their own strategic partnership have been dashed, with the two countries drifting apart over the past few decades and allowing tensions in their bilateral relationship to hamper any cooperation on security issues.[2]

This breakdown in Japanese-Korean relations is limiting the ability of the U.S. to fully utilize its regional alliances to defend the status quo in East Asia. It is in the interest of American peace and prosperity to prevent any foreign power from dominating the region, which is home to multiple security partners and critical markets for American goods. Additionally, East Asia sits atop a number of trade routes vital to the broader economy that underpins the broader liberal international order. This article proposes a potential strategy through which Washington can foster relations between its allies and better push back against Beijing’s efforts to become a regional hegemon. As such, this strategy would aim to improve relations between Japan and South Korea to the point where they are willing to work bilaterally on security concerns under their own initiative, creating a network out of America’s regional alliances that would in turn amplify the strategic advantages of the U.S. within the region while also accounting for its new domestic constraints.

The Strategic Context of East Asia

U.S. Leadership

As the historical guarantor of East Asian security, America has traditionally found itself as the hub connecting its regional partners. While this model held up during the Cold War, in recent years it has strained to deal with the rise of a revisionist China. A combination of budgetary constraints and domestic challenges have compelled America to seek to shift the burden of maintaining regional stability onto its allies.[3] Although President Biden is far more interested than his predecessor in bolstering these relationships, he faces a delicate balancing act of emphasizing the need for alliances, while also insisting these same partners take more active roles in providing for their own defense.[4] This approach necessitates mending relations between Japan and South Korea, something previous administrations have attempted to accomplish through realpolitik. While this has resulted in progress in some areas—like improving interoperability between all three militaries—it has not addressed the systemic drivers that have left America’s closest allies at odds with one another for the past few decades.[5]

Japanese-Korean Relations

The tensions that have come to define relations between Japan and the Republic of Korea are largely a result of diverging views on history, economics, and security. Both countries have found themselves at odds with one another on a variety of issues and have created a self-sustaining cycle that drives them increasingly apart.

The lasting scars created during Japan’s colonization of the Korean Peninsula from 1910 to the end of World War II in 1945 are the most obvious challenge to the bilateral relationship. When the two countries normalized ties under the 1965 Treaty on Basic Relations, Japan felt its provision of war reparations through a series of financial grants and low-interest loans was sufficient to make amends and shift towards a more future-facing relationship.[6] The Republic of Korea, under the military dictatorship of Park Chung-hee, was willing to accept such a deal, as the country was focused on redeveloping an economy devastated by the Korean War. But with the return of civilian control, this policy came under reconsideration. At the same time, Korean nationalism based on anti-Japanese sentiments became a powerful tool for politicians to bolster their influence and credibility.[7]

Two issues in particular have provoked strong emotions on behalf of South Koreans; the use of forced labor in Japan’s wartime economy and the coercion of women into military brothels as so-called comfort women.[8] These grievances have become a source of Korean identity, particularly amongst younger generations who otherwise have no memory of or direct ties to the colonial period.[9] As a result, even those policymakers who want to see a closer relationship are pressured to chastise Japan for failing to fully atone for its wartime atrocities. Perhaps most alarming for the prospect of enhanced bilateral ties, there is now a trend of South Korean politicians internationalizing their criticism of Japan. In addition to raising the issue of comfort women at the United Nations, the current Moon administration has joined China in mourning the Nanjing Massacre and Russia in celebrating the role of the Soviet Union in the Korean independence movement. Both of these events featured strong anti-Japanese narratives.[10]

Japan, for its part, takes a seemingly schizophrenic approach to whether or not it has fully accounted for its past. On the one hand, it has almost become a ritual for Japanese Prime Ministers to admit to war crimes and apologize to surviving victims.[11] These apologies have grown so frequent that many opinion polls have begun to register apology fatigue, where respondents feel Japan is constantly being attacked on the global stage even after making good-faith efforts to address past wrongs. At the same time, a number of conservative politicians actively undermine these efforts by calling into question the severity of Japan’s crimes and the extent to which Japan needs to continue to make amends to its neighbors.[12] These political figures have erased whatever goodwill was generated by official apologies in their efforts to whitewash history, including recent efforts to reframe the colonization of the Korean Peninsula as Japanese efforts to help modernize the Korean people.[13] These actions, and the corresponding mistrust they engender on behalf of South Koreans, have pushed both sides further apart in reckoning with the past.

These historical tensions have spilled over into economic ties and shape how both Japan and the Republic of Korea view trade with one another. As mentioned, the 1965 Treaty on Basic Relations provided a series of loans and grants to help South Korea rebuild its economy. This purposefully meshed with Japan’s larger regional strategy of using checkbook diplomacy to atone for its actions during World War II, while also fostering new markets for its exports.[14] This approach served both Japan and South Korea well for decades, and Japan’s foreign trade policy eventually helped South Korea develop into an economic powerhouse in its own right.[15] However, as the South Korean market has matured, the power dynamic between the Republic of Korea and Japan has shifted. South Korean goods can now compete globally with Japan’s, in both price and quality. China has become the biggest market for these goods and is currently South Korea’s largest trade partner. Further weakening Japan’s influence, China has also become the largest source of foreign direct investment into the Republic of Korea.[16]

China’s centrality to the South Korean economy has pushed Seoul to take a number of steps that, in the eyes of Tokyo, are meant to undermine either Japan or the broader international liberal order. This includes a free trade agreement between China and South Korea, even as a similar agreement with Japan has languished for years. The Republic of Korea has also joined China’s Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, an initiative that many countries view as a direct competitor to the U.S.-backed World Bank, and one that both Washington and Tokyo have urged partner countries to avoid.[17] In a move particularly galling to Japan, President Moon has suggested that South Korea could partner with North Korea in developing a “peace economy” that would erase Japan’s economic advantages over the Korean Peninsula.[18] In many ways, this is a product of the Republic of Korea’s perception of Japan as a declining economic power and the need to find new, if unconventional, partners to further bolster its own growth. But it also serves to further undermine a key element of the bilateral relation that had benefited both sides for decades.

Even as South Korea and Japan have grown farther apart over historical and economic issues, security threats have served to somewhat stabilize relations. This is in large part due to the role of the U.S. and its desire to see a trilateral relationship between itself and its two regional partners form a hedge against China and backstop peace in East Asia. A constellation of agreements like the Trilateral Information Sharing Arrangement, General Security of Military Information Agreement, and Acquisition and Cross-Servicing Agreement (ACSA) have ensured all three governments consistently consult one another on security issues.[19] But even these are coming under pressure as Japan and South Korea are increasingly at odds over their two primary security challenges.[20]

The Democratic Peoples’ Republic of Korea (DPRK) should serve as a unifying factor for Japan and South Korea, as it poses an existential threat to both countries with its conventional weapons and ballistic arsenal. This logic held during the Cold War, as the U.S. united its allies in countering the Communist bloc, but the two countries have very different long-term objectives with regards to what has become the region’s greatest tactical threat. South Korea ultimately hopes to peacefully reunite with North Korea, and to that end has taken great efforts to engage the Kim regime through economic and diplomatic initiatives.[21] This approach is an anathema to the Japanese public, which overwhelmingly backs punitive sanctions as the best method to counter Pyongyang’s aggressive policies and deter efforts to build up its nuclear arsenal. Japan has recently eschewed multilateral engagement with North Korea, as it feels its concerns over the abduction of Japanese civilians by North Korean spies during the 1970s and 1980s were largely ignored by other countries during the Six Party Talks.[22] Further hampering diplomatic overtures is Japan’s unease over the prospect of a united Korean Peninsula, which may embrace an anti-Japanese stance in order to further a sense of pan-Korean nationalism.[23]

While both South Korea and Japan agree that North Korea is a tactical threat, they are at odds as to what degree China is a strategic one. South Korea has purposefully taken a sanguine approach to China, with Seoul viewing it as a potential partner even as it expresses alarm at some of China’s more assertive actions.[24] South Korea accepts Beijing’s role as the North’s key patron and acknowledges that, even as it has had limited success in reining in the Kim regime, it has spared the Peninsula the chaos of a North Korean collapse.[25] Seoul also realizes the importance of Chinese markets to its economy and is concerned that any efforts to challenge Beijing will lead to economic retaliation.[26] All of this means that South Korea is unwilling to embrace the hardline tactics increasingly favored by the U.S. and Japan.

In direct contrast, Tokyo has come to see China as both a tactical and strategic threat to its interests. In the immediate term, China has begun to militarize the territorial dispute over the Senkaku Islands, threatening a grey zone kinetic conflict in which Japan is not convinced the U.S. would come to its defense. [27,28] Moreover, China has proven capable of mobilizing anti-Japanese sentiments amongst its citizens and wielding its own economic clout to counter Japan’s efforts to limit its influence throughout the region.[29] This, in turn, has formed the basis for Japan’s view of China as a strategic threat that is actively working to undermine the U.S.-led liberal international order that underpins Japan’s security and prosperity. Even as the U.S. becomes more insular, Japan is attempting to further enmesh it within the region through initiatives like the Free and Open Indo-Pacific and the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership.[30] Unfortunately, it has had limited success in securing involvement of the Republic of Korea.

China’s Revisionism

It is against this backdrop of a constrained America and squabbling allies that a rising China is trying to establish itself as a hegemon in East Asia.[31] Beijing has already supplanted the U.S. as the largest trading partner for many of the region’s countries, and its attempts to foster economic dependency threaten to drag some of Washington’s security partners into its own orbit. China’s Communist Party has also proved adept at manipulating existing tensions between these partners, as evidenced by its recent efforts in encouraging South Korean boycotts of Japanese goods and backing non-governmental organizations that demand reparations for comfort women and forced labor victims.[32] Most alarming, the techniques China is using to enhance its regional influence are part of a broader attack on the liberal international order. From propping up rogue regimes like North Korea to flouting international law in pursuit of territorial claims and even establishing parallel international organizations designed to circumvent U.S.-dominated bodies, China is attempting to reshape the international environment into something that more closely embodies its own values and interests.[33] Now more than ever, Beijing is demonstrating that it believes it can achieve this due to America’s turn inwards. Such a brazen assault on multilateralism demands a coordinated response, ideally by the U.S. and its allies.

Desired Ends and Key Assumptions

This strategy would aim to improve Japanese-Korean relations to the point where they are able and willing to join the U.S. in this multilateral response to an increasingly assertive China. More importantly, these mended ties should shift the regional security structure away from a model that is driven by the U.S. with Japan and the Republic of Korea as reluctant followers to a more networked approach where their own cooperation and initiatives can augment America’s efforts. The U.S. cannot force this rapprochement but instead must work obliquely to shape domestic considerations within both Tokyo and Seoul. While previous administrations focused on the military instrument to encourage at least tactical coordination, the theory of this approach’s success lies in using the diplomatic and information instruments to tackle the drivers pushing Japan and South Korea apart.

This strategy rests upon five key assumptions. The first is that China is actively attempting to become a regional hegemon, and its efforts are an inherent challenge to the U.S.-led international order. This is important, as it is also assumed that both Japan and the ROK support the liberal order that has largely underwritten their own peace and prosperity, and therefore they are willing to take actions to protect it. Next, this approach assumes South Korea is unwilling to join any trilateral alliance with the U.S. and Japan, meaning cooperation needs to be driven by a shared understanding of common goals rather than formal coordination mechanisms. Finally, this strategy assumes the current makeup of Congress leaves little opportunity for significant foreign policy legislation to pass during the Biden administration and instead focuses on the executive branch’s abilities to improve inter-allied relations.

Lines of Effort

To enhance Japanese-Korean relations to the point where they are willing to coordinate on security issues under their own volition, Washington will need to deftly use its diplomatic and information tools to shape the outlook of its counterparts as well as to enable and persuade both to pursue closer cooperation.

Develop a New Narrative

As the first line of effort designed to shape the perceptions of Washington’s allies in East Asia, this strategy starts with developing a new narrative as to what kind of challenge China poses to the region. This is critical for getting all three governments on the same page regarding the  nature of the issue. Japan and the U.S. are currently in agreement as to what kind of risk China poses to their interests and have enshrined these concerns within their respective national security strategies.[34,35] South Korea, however, has been hesitant to label its largest trading partner as a security threat. Like many other Asian countries, South Korea is not yet willing to take sides in the great-power competition.[36] Public opinion polls have shown that the average Korean citizen does not see China as a military threat, leading policymakers to ignore America’s efforts to paint it as such. In fact, many younger South Koreans view China as a more natural partner for both economic and security purposes than the U.S. When it comes to Japan, a large percentage of the public sees its historical adversary as an even greater threat than North Korea.[37] As a result, there is a counter narrative that China is not the strategic concern that America and Japan make it out to be, and therefore there is no reason for South Korea to work more closely with Japan to contain it.

If the U.S. is to convince South Korea of the need to further cooperate with Japan, it will need to create a new narrative that, instead of focusing on security threats, highlights how China is undermining the international order that has underwritten the stability and prosperity of East Asia for decades. Even if there is not a sense that China poses a military threat, regional polls show little faith in Beijing’s ability to be a positive actor in the international arena.[38] South Korea in particular has also expressed unease with Beijing’s approach to human rights issues, due to its own history of colonial and dictatorial rule.[39] A narrative that highlights China as undermining the international rule of law draws upon these sentiments and creates an environment where Tokyo and Seoul can find common ground.[40] In developing this narrative, the U.S. should focus on areas where China has acted against global norms and which resonate with both Japanese and South Korean publics. This could include actions in the South China Sea, the Belt and Road Initiative, or even human rights violations in Xinjiang.

The State Department should lead an information campaign designed to highlight these developments, demonstrating that Washington is not asking its partners to choose sides in a great-power competition but to defend the current international order. This campaign would target both ordinary citizens as well as governing elites in Japan and South Korea, who are aware of these issues but have not yet experienced sufficient political pressure to take action. Traditional outreach efforts like television interviews and newspaper articles should be coupled with a presence on popular social media platforms like LINE and Twitter in order to reach the broadest audience possible.

Because Beijing already has significant clout in many of the international fora it is attempting to manipulate, this campaign will require Washington to increase its own engagement. In addition to making sure all multilateral missions are fully staffed, the Biden administration should appoint a special envoy for multilateral integrity—a position in the Bureau of International Organizations proposed by the previous administration.[41] This envoy would catalogue Beijing’s efforts to undermine international organizations, as well as remind member states of their own organizational obligations and the need to respect institutional norms. This role would require that the U.S. itself respect the parliamentary rules of the organizations it is a part of, but this approach would also go a long way in both signaling a return of America’s international leadership and a renewed commitment to multilateralism.

Of course, China does not limit its efforts to undermine the current rules-based order to international settings; it frequently resorts to bullying tactics in its bilateral relationships to cow weaker partners into obeying unreasonable demands.[42] Therefore the U.S. should also release information gathered by its intelligence community on examples where China has attempted to diplomatically coerce other nations, which could diminish this tactic’s appeal. The intelligence community should coordinate with its Japanese and South Korean counterparts in the Cabinet Intelligence and Research Office and National Intelligence Service, respectively. The National Intelligence Service, in particular, has experience collecting information in China that could prove useful.[43] More importantly, including both countries’ services would give them a stake in the new narrative as well as potentially foster information sharing outside traditional military settings.

This first line of effort is particularly cost-effective; beyond naming a special envoy, it does not require any new offices or investments. The true cost will come in the form of time, as it takes years for a new narrative to firmly take hold. There is some risk to this course of action if South Korean politicians become so concerned about the preponderance of China’s power within the region that they are afraid to protest against even the most egregious of its behaviors. This in turn means that the U.S. needs to embark sooner rather than later on this option, even more so as it primes the environment for the next line of effort.

Address Historical Issues

While the U.S. works to ensure its allies agree as to what kind of challenge China presents, it needs to improve how the Japanese and South Koreans view each other. Public opinion surveys in both countries show less than 25% of respondents have a positive impression of their counterparts. This drops even further when specifically mentioning current relations between Japan and South Korea, with less than ten percent viewing the state of relations positively and the majority of participants in both countries rating them as relatively or even extremely bad.[44] It is apparent that negative perceptions of their neighbors coincide with how Japanese and South Koreans feel about the state of relations between their two countries. As mentioned in the strategic context, many of these negative perceptions emanate from historical animosities.

Rather than paper over these differences as elements of the past or sideline them in the hopes of addressing current strategic concerns as previous administrations attempted, this line of effort LOE attempts to enable a full accounting of the past. Collecting narratives of suffering and hardship on both sides, as opposed to asking one country to accept all accountability, will move beyond the black-and-white approach each country has taken towards grievances of the World War II era. Furthermore, showing that South Korea does not have a monopoly on suffering and signaling that Japan is truly committed to rectifying its past actions will then set the stage for the subsequent efforts designed to actively strengthen ties.

The U.S. is in a unique place to jump-start this reconciliation process due to its own actions in World War II. To better highlight how all of the belligerents waged brutal campaigns throughout the war, President Biden should issue an apology for America’s use of atomic weapons to end the war, ideally on the anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima. There is precedent for such a statement, most notably in President Clinton’s 1999 apology for America’s support of the Guatemalan military during the country’s brutal civil war. This has been cited by many of the civil war’s victims as a critical element of the search for justice.[45] To be most effective, this apology must be an unconditional acceptance of responsibility, as opposed to the those made by previous Japanese Prime Ministers who carefully worded their statements to avoid enraging hardcore nationalists. More than simply creating an example that Japan could follow, America’s acceptance of guilt for some of the events in World War II could help assuage the conservative Japanese belief that the country has tortured itself by accepting the blame for everything that took place during the war.[46]

With a presidential apology issued, the U.S. should immediately continue this momentum by helping Japan and South Korea set up a truth and reconciliation council through the U.S. Institute of Peace. The U.S. Institute of Peace is well positioned to run such a council, as it has conducted extensive research into more than 40 similar truth and inquiry commissions conducted over the past 50 years.[47] In particular, the Japan and South Korea Truth and Reconciliation Council should be modeled after the 1995 South African Commission of Truth and Reconciliation. This commission has been heralded as one of the most successful, as it addressed a broad scope of abuses dating back decades despite the widespread destruction of official documents.[48] Similar constraints would face any council involving Japan and South Korea, although many of the individually named perpetrators would no longer be alive to stand trial.[49]

As mentioned, the purpose of this council would be to fully explore and document human rights abuses that occurred throughout the Asia-Pacific Theater during World War II. This could build upon South Korea’s own truth-finding commissions, which focused on the Korean colonial government’s collaboration with the Japanese empire.[50] So as to move away from the current black-and-white narrative of South Korean victimhood and Japanese guilt, the council should also incorporate testimonies from the new right, South Korean academics who have begun to question some of the prevailing views on comfort women and attribute many of the era’s transgressions to a complacent and corrupt political elite.[51] Japanese voices should also be heard, including survivors of America’s domestic internment camps and prisoners of war.

To be fully successful, both governments in Japan and South Korea must acknowledge the suffering of civilians during World War II, while accepting blame or at least some of the liability for how the war was waged.[52] Additionally, Japan must make some form of compensation available to victims and their families, possibly by reviving the now-defunct Asian Women’s Fund and expanding qualified recipients to include victims of forced labor. Any reconciliatory or restorative measures that come out of the council should be binding, which will require the Institute of Peace—and most likely the Department of State, through the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor—to engage with political leadership in both countries to ensure the council has legal authorities and professional staffing.[53]

This would be a second low-cost option with no need for Congressional approval. Once again, the greatest cost comes from the amount of time needed to fully carry out a truth and reconciliation council. The South African model lasted some seven years, but a full decade may be necessary to address the deep, historical grievances that mar ties between Japan and South Korea. The biggest risk to this effort is that hawks in all three countries—Japan, the U.S., and South Korea—refuse to engage in a council that shines a negative light on their respective militaries. There is also a risk from this approach that newly uncovered abuses might worsen relations, although this damage would be limited to the short-term and could be repaired by the reparation portion of the council. Both of these risks can be mitigated through expansive community engagement to ensure widespread support for the council and its findings.

Costs and Risks

Both of these proposed lines of effort carry costs and risks. On the whole, they are designed to be relatively inexpensive options that take into account a number of political realities, including the ongoing legislative gridlock within Congress and an increasingly protectionist electorate wary of foreign adventurism. But their long timeline leads to the greatest risk to this overarching strategy, which is the inability of the U.S. to muster the political will to undertake an effort that may not fully bear fruit within a single administration. This risk is compounded by the fact that China will almost certainly seek to take advantage of America’s short-term political cycles, particularly if it perceives this strategy as a prelude to diplomatic isolation. The risk from this strategy would then be that Beijing enhances its efforts at driving a wedge between Washington and its allies, a risk that is at is greatest during the initial phase of this strategy when South Korea has yet to accept the new narrative on China’s threat to the liberal international order and remains at odds with Japan.

Mitigating this risk means undertaking these lines of efforts as soon as possible, as well as conducting extensive diplomatic engagement to both counter China’s efforts and track progress on improving ties. Because both Japan and South Korea are open societies, this progress will at least initially be measured in how much this campaign has been able to positively change public opinion. A fully successful strategy would eventually see Japan and South Korea develop their own economic and security initiatives independent of the United States, indicating a healthy bilateral relationship has developed that can stand on its own.

Conclusion

President Biden has made it clear that he is interested in making better use of America’s unique system of alliances to defend the current liberal international order. Nowhere is this order under greater threat than in East Asia, where China has made the greatest strides in carving out a sphere of influence. This theoretical strategy would aim to repair the strained relations between Japan and South Korea, ideally to the point where they are willing to work bilaterally on security concerns of their own volition and thereby create a network out of America’s traditional hub-and-spoke approach to regional alliances. To repair and even enhance this relationship, this strategy proposes two distinct lines of effort: developing a new narrative on the need to defend against Chinese revisionism and addressing historical grievances. There is no guarantee that this strategy would be fully successful in restoring relations because it deals with domestic politics within two vibrant democracies. But even a partial success in fostering enhanced coordination between Japan and South Korea would be a benefit to the U.S. It would create an opportunity to move away from a hub-and-spoke model of allied relations to a more networked approach, where self-driven initiatives from Tokyo and Seoul amplify Washington’s efforts and even free up diplomatic bandwidth to engage with other regional partners. At the very least, it would lessen the costs of maintaining regional security at a time when America is increasingly constrained in its pursuit of grand strategies.

Jonathan Dixon has just completed a Master of Science in National Security Strategy at the National War College. He has written on Chinese irredentism, online nationalism, and digital authoritarianism. He holds a Master of Art in International Relations from American University and a Bachelor of Arts from Furman University.  This essay reflects his own views and not those of the U.S. government or the Department of Defense.

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Header Image: Flags of Japan and the Republic of Korea. (Getty)

Notes:

[1] David Barno and Nora Bensahel, “After the Pandemic: America and National Security in a Changed World,” War on the Rocks, March 31, 2020, available at https://warontherocks.com/2020/03/after-the-pandemic-america-and-national-security-in-a-changed-world/.

[2] Shin Kak-soo, “Returning Seoul-Tokyo Relations to Normalcy,” Council on Foreign Relations, December 17, 2020, available at https://www.cfr.org/blog/returning-seoul-tokyo-relations-normalcy.

[3] David Barno and Nora Bensahel, “After the Pandemic: America and National Security in a Changed World,” War on the Rocks, March 31, 2020, https://warontherocks.com/2020/03/after-the-pandemic-america-and-national-security-in-a-changed-world/.

[4] “Interim National Security Strategy Guidance,” White House, March 2021, available at https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/NSC-1v2.pdf.

[5] Chaekwang You and Wonjae Kim, “Loss Aversion and Risk-Seeking in Korea-Japan Relations,” Journal of East Asian Studies 20 (2019), p. 55.

[6] Taku Tamaki, “It Takes Two to Tango: The Difficult Japan – South Korea Relations as Clash of Realities,” Japanese Journal of Political Science 21 (2020), p. 3.

[7] You and Kim, p. 55.

[8] Joe Phillips, Wondong Lee, and Joseph Yi, “Future of South Korea – Japan Relations: Decoupling or Liberal Discourse,” The Political Quarterly 91.2 (April-June 2020), p. 448.

[9] Karina V. Korostelina, “The Normative Function of National Historical Narratives: South Korean Perceptions of Relations with Japan,” National Identities 21.2 (2019), p. 179.

[10] Phillips et. al., pp. 450-451.

[11] Kazuya Fukuoka, “Japanese History Textbook Controversy at a Crossroads: Joint History Research, Politicization of Textbook Adoption Process, and Apology Fatigue in Japan,” Global Change, Peace & Security 30.3 (2018), p. 316.

[12] Ibid., 329.

[13] Indu Pandey, “Tigers on the Prowl: South Korea, Japan, and the Futility of Symbolic Disputes,” Harvard International Review 40.2 (Spring 2019), p. 16.

[14] Lam Peng Er, “Reviewed Work(s): Changing Power Relations in Northeast Asia: Implications for Relations between Japan and South Korea by Marie Soderberg,” The Journal of Japanese Studies 39.1 (Winter 2013), 240.

[15] Alexandra Sakaki and Junya Nishino, “Japan’s South Korea Predicament,” International Affairs 94.4 (2018), p. 749.

[16] Min Xia, Linan Jia, and Jie Chen, “Northeast Asian Perceptions of China’s Rise: To What Extent Does Economic Interdependence Work?” Modern Chinese Studies 21.2 (2014), p. 120.

[17] Sakaki and Nishino, p. 751.

[18] Kim Tong-hyung, “Moon Calls for ‘Peace Economy’ with North Korea, Slams Japan,” AP News, August 5, 2019, available at https://apnews.com/article/f09bce1130ec432fada58c58dc6e1f74.

[19] Sakaki and Nishino, p. 738.

[20] Koya Jibiki and Kim Jaewon, “South Korea Reverses Decision to End GSOMIA Intel Pact with Japan,” Nikkei Asia, November 22, 2019, available at https://asia.nikkei.com/Spotlight/Japan-South-Korea-rift/South-Korea-reverses-decision-to-end-GSOMIA-intel-pact-with-Japan.

[21] Bhubhindar Singh, “Beyond Identity and Domestic Politics: Stability in South Korea – Japan Relations,” The Korean Journal of Defense Analysis 27.1 (March 2015), p. 24.

[22] Shin Kawashima, “Japan-US-China Relations during the Trump Administration and the Outlook for East Asia,” Asia-Pacific Review 24.1 (2017), p. 27.

[23] You and Kim, pp. 53-54.

[24] Audrey Y. Wong, “Comparing Japanese and South Korean Strategies towards China and the United States: All Politics is Local,” Asian Survey 55.6 (November – December 2015), p. 1246.

[25] Jina Kim, “China and Regional Security Dynamics on the Korean Peninsula,” Korea Net Assessment 2020: Politicized Security and Unchanging Strategic Realities (Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2020), p. 56.

[26] Wong, 1266.

[27] China refers to these as the Diaoyu Islands.

[28] Shogo Suzuki and Corey Wallace, “Explaining Japan’s Response to Geopolitical Vulnerabilities,” International Affairs 94.4 (2018), p. 711.

[29] Ibid., p. 716.

[30] Kawashima, p. 27.

[31] Evelyn Goh, “Contesting Hegemonic Order: China in East Asia,” Security Studies 28.3 (2019), p. 614.

[32] Robin Harding and Edward White, “Divided by History: Why Japan – South Korea Ties Have Soured,” Financial Times, October 24, 2019, available at https://www.ft.com/content/13a3ff9a-f3ed-11e9-a79c-bc9acae3b654.

[33] Kristine Lee, “It’s Not Just the WHO: How China is Moving on the Whole UN,” Politico, April 15, 2020, available at https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/04/15/its-not-just-the-who-how-china-is-moving-on-the-whole-un-189029.

[34] “National Security Strategy,” Cabinet Secretariat of Japan, December 17, 2013, available at https://www.cas.go.jp/jp/siryou/131217anzenhoshou/nss-e.pdf.

[35] “National Security Strategy of the United States of America,” Trump White House Archives, December 20, 2017, available at https://trumpwhitehouse.archives.gov/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/NSS-Final-12-18-2017-0905.pdf.

[36] David C. Kang, American Grand Strategy and East Asian Security in the Twenty-First Century (New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2017), p. 10.

[37] Jae Ho Chung, Between Ally and Partner: Korea-China Relations and the United States (New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 2008), p. 97.

[38] David Martin Jones, Nicholas Khoo, and M.L.R. Smith, Asian Security and the Rise of China: International Relations in an Age of Volatility (Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar Publications, 2013), p. 51.

[39] Chung, 101.

[40] Heon Joo Jung and Han Wool Jeong, “South Korean Attitude Towards China: Threat Perception, Economic Interest, and National Identity,” African and Asian Studies 15 (2016), pp. 245-246.

[41] Colum Lynch, “U.S. State Department Appoints Envoy to Counter Chinese Influence at the U.N.,” Foreign Policy, January 22, 2020, available at https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/01/22/us-state-department-appoints-envoy-counter-chinese-influence-un-trump/.

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[53] Kim, p. 544.