Washington is desperate for a three-way alliance with Tokyo and Seoul that could present a united front against Beijing and Pyongyang But the pair are struggling to put behind them a troubled past that includes Japan’s use of wartime ‘comfort women’ forced into sexual slavery
In US foreign policy circles, there has been a long coveted strategic aim in East Asia: the formation of a trilateral alliance with South Korea and Japan to present a united front against common security concerns, including China’s growing influence.
The only problem? South Korea and Japan just cannot seem to get along. Relations between Tokyo and Seoul, long strained by historical issues stemming from Japan’s 1910-45 colonisation of the Korean peninsula, have soured further as the sides stumble from one controversy to the next.
In recent weeks, the two sides have clashed over an encounter between their militaries in international waters, and the issues of Korean forced labourers and “comfort women” pressed into sexual slavery during the second world war.
“The United States has long hoped that its two allies in Asia would work more closely together, bilaterally and trilaterally, with the United States to address and combat regional security threats,” said Brad Glosserman, the deputy director of Tama University’s Centre for Rulemaking Strategies in Tokyo.
“There’s no opportunity for the system to snap back. It’s just one blow after another.”
On Wednesday, a South Korean court seized the assets of a Japanese company to compensate victims of forced labour, following a related Supreme Court decision that Taro Kono, Japan’s foreign minister, called “totally unacceptable”.
