TOKYO, April 5. /TASS/. Relations between Japan and South Korea, as well as in the trilateral security framework with the United States, will continue to deepen, partially due to South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol's weak domestic political stance, Shunji Hiraiwa, professor at Nanzan University and leading Japanese expert on the Korean peninsula, told TASS in an interview, while commenting on the normalization of Japanese-South Korean relations after several years of cooling in bilateral ties.
"There is no doubt that Japan-South Korea security cooperation will grow deeper. There will be stronger interaction not only between Japan and South Korea, but also in the trilateral framework with the United States taking part," he said. According to the expert, this process, especially with the rise to power of President Yoon in South Korea, has been moving faster than one might expect, as Tokyo and Seoul still harbor some mutual mistrust after a 2018 incident in which a South Korean ship caught a Japanese aircraft on its fire control radar.
At the same time, Hiraiwa noted that, in terms of domestic politics, the positions of the Yoon administration and its conservative People Power Party, which lacks a parliamentary majority, are now rather weak, and the odds are that a liberal government could come to power in the next presidential election. Therefore, according to the expert, the Yoon administration will spend the remaining four years trying to create a relationship with Japan that could not subsequently be changed for the worse. In the South Korean parliament, the opposition Democratic Toburo Party holds the majority. Its leaders are critical of the government for its hard line towards North Korea.
The expert also noted that Yoon will do his utmost to garner support by taking advantage of the international community's positive attitude toward stronger cooperation with Japan and the United States. "Therefore, America and Japan will seek to strengthen trilateral cooperation with South Korea as much as possible," he added.
The Yoon administration in March presented a plan for resolving the Tokyo-Seoul conflict over forced labor during the Japanese occupation of the Korean peninsula, which was accepted by the Japanese side. Later that month, the South Korean president paid a visit to Tokyo to present a set of measures for normalizing bilateral relations. In particular, Seoul decided to fully restore the bilateral agreement on the exchange of intelligence (General Security of Military Information Agreement GSOMIA) with Tokyo, which is of particular importance against the backdrop of progress in North Korea's nuclear missile program.
The Seoul government’s plan to normalize relations with Japan has angered the South Korean public, in particular because it contains no demands for an apology from Japan. The Democratic Toburo Party slammed the outcome of Yoon’s visit to Tokyo as an act of "disgraceful submission" to Japan.