Dokdo dispute to put smile on China’s face

Tom Plate U.S. journalist

This is the second in a series of contributing articles by international and Korean experts shedding light on Japan’s claim on Korea’s easternmost islets of Dokdo and other affairs that prove Japan’s lack of remorse about historic misdeeds it has committed. ― E.D.

If I were one of the good people of Korea, for whom my admiration is deep, long-standing and well known as my Japanese friends understand well, I would be prudent about my next step regarding the hapless handful of disputed island-rocks known as Dokdo in South Korea … but as Takeshima in at least one other place.

I frankly predict this: nothing good from all this will come; and perhaps a lot of bad.

The Chinese, for all their troubles, must be trying very hard not to laugh loudly. They don’t want anyone, especially in Washington, to sense how delighted they are with the recurrence of the island-rocks psychodrama. Topographically, the disputed territory adds up to something like 46-plus acres (smaller than a golf course).

But geopolitically, the Japanese and Koreans are at each other’s throats ― again. So this is a big-time opening for the boys in Beijing.

And I wouldn’t blame them for enjoying it. This is really good for us, say the Chinese leaders, although very quietly (in fact just among themselves). They don’t want Seoul and Tokyo to take notice of their mirth and possibly stop their quarrel. Rock-solid solidarity between the South Korean and Japanese governments is not in the Chinese interest.

Fragmentation offers Beijing piece of mind. Especially with regard to the current territorial disputes in the South China Sea, but in all other matters Asian as well, Beijing understandably prefers dealing with nations one-on-one. Well-constructed alliances with the West or genuine indigenous regional organizations, such as the Association of Southeast Asian States (ASEAN), potentially challenge nascent Chinese hegemony. So they need to be subtly frustrated, if not overtly opposed. To put it this way: if Asian geopolitics were like a basketball game, Beijing likes to play the position of Yao Ming against an opposing team of midgets.

And so when the Obama administration began pressuring Seoul and Tokyo to move closer on matters of military security ― to share more information, to think and even act more as a team ― the Chinese became worried. They also know that in this matter their erstwhile ally Pyongyang is more of a hindrance than a help, if it continues on more or less the same isolated, miscalculating and arrogant course.

But the Chinese can control their Machiavellianism if it enhances their prosperity. And only continued Asian peace does that. Truly destabilizing tensions between Seoul and Tokyo are like a potential earthquake rumbling beneath everyone’s feet. Victory and benefit for the Korean and Japanese people will not come from the headline-seekers or the exploiters of understandable but corrosive emotion and distrust but from the statesmen and visionaries who can see past their own immediate political interests.

Both South Korea and Japan can, and have produced, leaders of such stature. Two whom I have met ― and personally interviewed for my column ― are the late Kim Dae-jung, the peace-seeking Korean president who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2000, and the late Keizo Obuchi, the workaholic Japanese prime minister who basically died in office from massive fatigue while working for the betterment of Japan.

In 1998, the two memorably met in Tokyo to bury the hatchet on the issue of wartime crimes. They declared “their common determination to raise to a higher dimension the close, friendly and cooperative relations between Japan and the Republic of Korea which have been built since the normalization of their relations in 1965, so as to build a new Japan-Republic of Korea partnership towards the twenty-first century.”

So judge your politician’s policy and vision by the high-road Kim-Obuchi standard. Whatever their personal flaws, they were among Asia’s greatest postwar best. Accept no substitutes or pathetic poseurs. It is your future ― and that of your children ― with which the mean men will be playing the danger game.

Not to mention ― why make it so easy for Beijing to divide and perhaps even dominate?

U.S. journalist and columnist Tom Plate is the author of the “Giants of Asia” book series. The latest features U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, former South Korean foreign minister. Prof. Plate is the Distinguished Scholar of Asian and Pacific Studies at Loyola Marymount University. <The Korea Times/Tom Plate>

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