Contrasting Trilaterals: South Korea’s Summitry Dilemma

Two may be company, but three doesn’t seem like a crowd in Northeast Asia. The year 2023 saw diplomatic attempts to reintroduce trilateralism as the basis of regional cooperation. The August 2023 Camp David summit, hailed as historic for it marked the beginning of the institutionalization of Japan-South Korea-U.S. (or JKU) trilateral ties, took center stage in East Asian international relations. Its supposed rival triad, the China-Japan-South Korea summit, failed to take place as Beijing snubbed Seoul.

Trilateralism in Northeast Asia involving the United States or China isn’t entirely new. Still, the Camp David summit introduced a new variable that will likely reconfigure regional dynamics – Washington’s apparent willingness to engage the region more actively. The enthusiasm for this new “clique” is also seemingly shared by Japan and South Korea, both long-time U.S. security allies. 

The belated emergence of JKU trilateralism is puzzling as the three have shared common security concerns regarding North Korea since the 1990s, raising eyebrows as to whether South Korean leader Yoon Suk-yeol’s approval ratings were the driving force. The U.S. initiated the trilateral, yet it wouldn’t have been possible without Yoon risking his political cachet and mending ties with Japan. At the same time, South Korea’s pursuit of strengthening trilateral cooperation with Japan and the U.S. was done at the expense of its relations with China. 

Japan-South Korea-U.S. Trilateralism: A Precursor to an Asian NATO? 

The Camp David summit in August 2023 was historic and significant in many ways, especially given the humble beginning of JKU trilateral summitry. Born out of security considerations in the 1990s as North Korea resisted the U.S. unipolar moment by embarking on a nuclear venture, the JKU summits have been restricted to practicality rather than grand symbolism. Since the 1990s, JKU leaders met on the sidelines of multilateral summits like the APEC summit and the United Nations General Assembly for consultation purposes, usually driven by necessity related to North Korea’s nuclear program. Pragmatism made the meetings vulnerable to two-way diplomatic tensions, such as in 2014 when Japan-South Korea bilateral spats over history posed a potential obstacle to a three-way summit. 

JKU trilateralism offered a convenient venue for the United States to implement its blueprint for engagement with East Asia, as summarized in its Indo-Pacific strategy released in February 2022. As the strategy crystalized in the first year of the Biden administration, the United States formed another security trilateral in the region. Known as AUKUS (Australia-U.K.-U.S.), this trans-Pacific and trans-Atlantic trilateralism indicated an evolving regional security landscape. It hinted at a shift from the Cold War-era “hub-and-spoke” approach to a network of minilateral security partnerships with the United States as a primary node and Europe, or NATO in particular, as offshore support. Forming multiple minilateral partnerships spanning the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans would lessen the burden of hedging between the U.S. and China by East Asian states while allowing Washington to draw on the existing military and diplomatic capital embedded in its ties with European NATO allies.  

From this Indo-Pacific strategy perspective, establishing a trilateral partnership with Japan and South Korea was a logical conclusion. It is crucial in holding the northern part of the Indo-Pacific steadfast. Japan and South Korea are democracies with deep alliance ties with the United States and each has some sort of beef with China such that little persuasion was necessary for them to align with the U.S. Indo-Pacific strategy. Most of the groundwork to justify strengthening trilateral ties with Japan and South Korea was also already laid by North Korea’s continued weapons tests and launches. 

North Korea provided a valid enough reason to meet, and the three countries could easily freeride on existing summitry occasions. Within a year, they met five times on the sidelines of every possible multilateral summit the three attended: NATO, the G-7, the G-20, and the East Asian Summit. The frequency of the meetings spoke the silent part out loud – while North Korea was a common security concern, the United States’ competition with China was the deeper reason lurking in the background of these meetings. 

U.S. Indo-Pacific interests and strategy may be the primary engine for JKU trilateralism, but institutionalizing the trilateral partnership through a stand-alone summit wouldn’t have been possible without South Korea’s willingness to mend fences with Japan. The series of bilateral and trilateral summits in the first half of 2023 suggested that Washington’s pressure was working. 

Mending Fences in Return for Optics: Yoon’s Summitry Dilemma  

The fate of the U.S. Indo-Pacific strategy hinged upon South Korea’s enthusiasm. Policy-wise, the Yoon administration, in power since May 2022, was inclined to support this new strategy to deepen the United States’ political investment and commitment in the region and deter North Korea’s growing provocations. But the Yoon administration was handcuffed domestically. When he first took office, Yoon’s approval rating was around 50 percent. Since then, his approval rating has hovered around in the 30s, after hitting a record low of 24 percent just three months after he assumed the presidency. 

Diplomacy was a sore thumb for Yoon’s presidential office, epitomized in September 2022, when Yoon’s foreign trips to the U.K., the U.S., and Canada generated a series of embarrassing diplomatic moments. The South Korean public was brutal in their assessment of Yoon as a diplomat-in-chief, with 54 percent saying at the time that Yoon’s foreign visits were detrimental to South Korea’s interests.

In March 2023, South Korea and Japan abruptly announced they were restoring relations and diplomacy. Seoul pledged to reverse the previous Moon Jae-in administration’s Japan-related policies, including resuscitating the intelligence-sharing agreement Moon ended in 2019 in response to trade restrictions. The domestic political risk for Yoon was considerable as the rapprochement was vulnerable to criticism from the opposition and groups advocating justice for victims of imperial Japan. 

South Korean political elites have been aware of the public’s collective emotions and distrust toward Japan, particularly accusations of a lack of sincerity from Tokyo. Before almost every stand-alone summit with Japan since the first in 1983, there have been outcries from the South Korean people for a sincere official apology from Tokyo. When statements of apology were made, the common response was that the Japanese government lacked sincere remorse. Japan didn’t improve the situation as successive prime ministers made visits to Yasukuni Shrine, which symbolizes Japan’s militarist past, a move seen by many in South Korea as clear evidence of Japan’s insincerity in its apologies. 

For Yoon to reverse Moon’s policies was thus seen as abrupt and risky, considering that Yoon’s plummeting approval was closely correlated to blunders during his foreign visits. Criticism of the rapprochement was anticipated, but demonstrations during a summit are unsightly and may dim its success. To prevent public performances of anti-Yoon or anti-Japanese rhetoric from overshadowing the first stand-alone summit between Yoon and Japanese Prime Minister Kishida Fumio, Seoul announced a plan for forced laborers during Japan’s colonial rule to be compensated voluntarily rather than mandatorily by Japanese companies a fortnight before the meeting. As expected, protests followed the announcement, but they died down by the time Yoon flew to Tokyo, allowing Yoon and his administration to make the most of the fruits of rapprochement – one of which was to leave the United States impressed. 

Restored Japan-South Korea ties are crucial for the success of Washington’s Indo-Pacific strategy. A trilateral partnership and summit with the United States’ two East Asian allies were technically feasible because the North Korean threat persists. But as long as Japan and South Korea were on bad terms, any trilateral effort would be seen as temporary and futile, threatening the Indo-Pacific strategy writ large. For it to be taken seriously by other allies and China, the Japan-South Korea rapprochement had to be convincing. 

South Korea and Japan delivered. During the bilateral summit in March 2023, the first in 12 years, the leaders appeared to bond over sukiyaki and omurice in the upscale district of Ginza in Tokyo. Such a visual would have been unimaginable a year earlier, and it was baffling for the South Korean people, who saw the leaders’ bond restored to a level not seen since 2011. A week before Yoon’s visit, Gallup found that 64 percent of South Korean respondents felt it was unnecessary to improve ties if Japan’s attitude toward historical issues remains unchanged. Perhaps in response to these unnatural pictures of Kishida-Yoon bonding, out of those who disapproved of Yoon, 48 percent cited diplomacy and relations with Japan as reasons. Two weeks earlier, the figure was 29 percent. Yoon’s approval rating dropped from 35 percent to 33 percent following the summit. Meanwhile, the summit benefited Kishida, as Yoon’s concession in the wartime forced labor settlement would have satisfied the party hardliners. 

The Biden administration was impressed, even if the South Korean people were not. To help compensate Yoon for the expected South Korean domestic backlash, the United States provided Yoon with much-coveted visuals of distinguished diplomatic treatment. The following month, Yoon was rewarded with a state visit to the U.S., which was only the second to occur at the Biden White House and the first by a South Korean leader in 12 years. This was vital information that the South Korean media picked up. Pointedly, South Korea’s Presidential Office announced the April state visit to Washington, D.C. before announcing Yoon’s first stand-alone summit with Kishida, which would take place the following week. This may have been a bid to stymie the criticism that was to come, in addition to anger over Yoon’s controversial March First Independence Movement speech, which emphasized Japan as a partner while blatantly omitting any mention of militarist Japan’s colonial rule – the very reason for the independence movement on March 1, 1919, and its commemoration.

Among other rewards that the U.S. offered Yoon for his political courage to pursue rapprochement with Japan was so-called extended nuclear deterrence in the form of a consultative group as well as a limelight and stage for Yoon to sing spontaneously “American Pie” at the state dinner. The state visit boosted Yoon’s approval from 30 to 33 percent within a week, as South Koreans cited diplomacy as the main reason for their perceptions of Yoon (whether favorable or not) for the third month straight.

The March 2023 rapprochement summit between Seoul and Tokyo paved the way for institutionalizing trilateral relations. It significantly lowered the risk of domestic criticisms, especially in South Korea, as it frontloaded concerns while buying the three governments sufficient time to hammer together a trilateral statement. It also allowed Seoul and Tokyo to “test” their domestic publics again by holding another stand-alone summit in May when Kishida visited Seoul. That visit was publicized as the restoration of shuttle diplomacy, or frequent face-to-face diplomacy through reciprocal visits, giving the impression that Japan-South Korea relations were functional and cooperative. Kishida reportedly enjoyed a boost before he visited Seoul when his approval rating surpassed 50 percent from around 20 percent in early 2023. Yoon’s approval rose for two consecutive weeks following this reciprocated summit from 33 to 37 percent. Diplomacy dominated the reasons South Koreans gave for approving or disapproving Yoon. 

A month later, however, the issue of the release of treated water from the Fukushima nuclear plant became the third most common reason for disapproving of Yoon, threatening this hard-earned summitry-induced rise in approval. 

Camp David Summit: A New Partnership Targeted at China 

The flurry of summitry activities involving Seoul, Tokyo, and Washington in the first half of 2023 did not go unnoticed by China. Preemptively criticizing the trilateral alignment aimed against Beijing, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi urged Japan and South Korea to deepen cooperation with China, with whom they share Asian ethnicity. “It doesn’t matter how much you dye your hair blonde, how sharp you make your nose, you’ll never become Europeans or Americans. You’ll never become Westerners,” Wang said at a forum promoting trilateral cooperation, suggesting that the U.S.-led trilateralism is superficial at best.

As if in response to this racialized comment, the Biden White House hosted its two East Asian allies at Camp David. The summit was thematically centered around a new friendship, reflecting the “spirit” encompassed by the joint statement. The choice of location contributed to this theme as Camp David has been used before to proclaim a new era in U.S. foreign policy, and this marked its first such use during the Biden presidency. The summit was a ritual, institutionalizing trilateral relations at the highest and ministerial levels involving foreign ministers, defense ministers, and national security advisers who would meet trilaterally “at least annually.” This new partnership also inaugurated economic trilateral meetings involving the finance, commerce, and industry ministers. 

The three countries seemingly coordinated the visuals of the three leaders, evocative of long-time friends rubbing shoulders at a retreat. The visuals gave off a casual mood, demonstrating that the United States’ relations with its East Asian allies go beyond performing rigid diplomatic protocol to being organic and authentic. The leaders were in business casual attire, leaving off the ties. No trilateral discussion or negotiations occurred, or at least not based on the visuals, even though the leaders met bilaterally. The leaders held a joint press conference as if to gather for a ribbon-cutting ceremony. 

South Koreans, however, did not appreciate the visuals as these were overshadowed by reports that Yoon and Kishida did not discuss the release of the treated radioactive water at Fukushima. Yoon’s approval dropped by a percentage point to 34. Those who disapproved raised diplomacy and the water release as the top two reasons.

The ritual and performance of a new era of trilateral friendship entrenched South Korea within the so-called U.S. camp that aims to curb China’s influence in the Indo-Pacific region. For South Korea’s foreign policy, the Camp David summit symbolized Seoul’s abandonment of maintaining strategic ambiguity between the United States and China and realized the Yoon administration’s goal of making South Korea a “global pivotal state.” Under this strategy, Seoul will continue expanding its global role by strengthening its security-economic cooperation with the U.S., effectively leaving little room for cooperation with China. 

In its National Security Strategy released in June 2023, the Yoon administration elevated the status of trilateral cooperation, which expanded to include economic security and South Korea’s interests in the Indo-Pacific region. This would buffer against potential backlash from China in the form of economic sanctions, such as those put in place in 2017 as a retaliation against the deployment of THAAD in South Korea. 

The Decline of China-Japan-South Korea Trilateralism

As the JKU trilateral framework rose, another trilateral framework was in decline.

China-Japan-South Korea (CJK) trilateral cooperation, which emerged out of the Asian Financial Crisis in the late 1990s and was institutionalized during the Global Financial Crisis of 2008 in the form of an annual trilateral summit, has enjoyed little spotlight since its inception. In contrast to the JKU, however, the CJK trilateral cooperation is highly institutionalized, marked by the Trilateral Cooperation Secretariat (TCS), established in 2011 and staffed by an equal number of diplomats and officers from each of the three countries. 

The U.S. welcomed this cooperation, as it did not threaten its security cooperation with either Japan or South Korea. The Northeast Asian trilateral cooperation has centered around economic and human security cooperation and people-to-people exchanges, thus not overlapping with the United States’ trilateralism centered on traditional security and military cooperation. Yet, the CJK trilateral cooperation symbolized a nascent Northeast Asian community, crowned by the trilateral summit that had regularly been stand-alone since 2008, except in 2013 and 2014 when it was canceled because of Japan-South Korea tensions. Each capital takes turns hosting the summit, with South Korea slated to host in 2020 but forced to cancel due to the COVID-19 pandemic. When it was due to resume in 2021, tensions between Japan and South Korea over wartime labor compensation and sexual slavery meant that Japan gave a cold shoulder to Seoul, which wanted to use the trilateral meeting to ease tensions.

The Yoon administration had marginalized CJK trilateral cooperation until the spring of 2023, when it floated the idea of hosting a summit before the end of the year. Successfully hosting a CJK summit could have boosted Yoon’s approval domestically as it would demonstrate the administration’s diplomatic dexterity. Hosting a Chinese leader at home would have helped score points on the diplomacy front, especially considering the general election looming in April 2024. 

The opposition Democratic Party has advocated for balanced diplomacy between the United States and China instead of putting all of South Korea’s diplomatic eggs into one basket. In their view, maintaining closer ties with China could function as a guardrail against the uncertainty of U.S. foreign policy, which could shift if Biden fails to get re-elected or China-U.S. tensions were to ease considerably. It was a lesson learned following the Asian Financial Crisis of 1997-98 and the Global Financial Crisis a decade later – which led to the emergence and institutionalization of CJK trilateralism in the first place.

However, the potential for hosting the first CJK summit in four years appears to have evaporated when the Yoon administration’s National Security Strategy took shape in the second half of 2022. U.S.-led trilateralism took up much of South Korea’s foreign policy under Yoon, beginning with the trilateral meetings on the sidelines of the NATO, G-7, and G-20 summits that built up to the Phnom Penh trilateral joint statement of November 2022, spelling out the premise of trilateral cooperation extending to economic security. 

China displayed a lukewarm attitude toward trilateral foreign ministers’ meetings and summits. During the trilateral meeting in Busan in late November to discuss the summit, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi told South Korea’s Foreign Minister Park Jin not to politicize economic and technology issues, hinting at China’s displeasure with U.S.-led trilateralism expanding beyond security and military cooperation. In a further show of disapproval, Wang cut his trip short, forcing the cancellation of an official dinner and preventing the issuing of a joint trilateral statement. 

Absence of Summit a Bane for Yoon and Party

The absence of the CJK summit in 2023 may not have a perilous consequence for the region but could be detrimental to South Korea’s interests. As the smallest of the Northeast Asian trio, South Korea has the most benefits to reap from maintaining stable cooperation with China and Japan. While the Yoon administration may celebrate the Camp David trilateralism as a success in achieving “peace through strength” and recognition of South Korea as a “global pivotal state,” the repercussions of this tunnel-vision foreign policy have begun surfacing. At the 2023 APEC summit, for instance, Xi Jinping snubbed Yoon while meeting with Kishida and holding a summit with Biden. 

The pushing back of the Northeast Asian trilateral summit indefinitely could erode South Korea’s diplomatic capital and diminish whatever foreign policy accomplishments the administration has achieved, further endangering Yoon’s his approval rating and implicating his party, the People Power Party, leading up to a potential defeat in the April general election. A setback in the general election would predict the persistence of Yoon’s summitry dilemma – domestic constraints and criticisms of his face-to-face meetings with foreign leaders – until he leaves office in 2027.