SEOUL, August 25. /TASS/. A NATO-like multilateral East Asian military alliance under the leadership of the United States is out of the question because of poor ties between South Korea and Japan, said Institute for Unification Studies Director, professor of Ewha Women's University Park Won-gon.
"I think it's impossible. [The multilateral alliance] implies allied relations between South Korea and Japan. That just won’t happen," the expert told TASS. "There are historical issues, including the ‘comfort women’ issue and the Liancourt Rocks problem. We can strengthen trilateral security cooperation, but an alliance is a completely different story."
Seoul and Tokyo have an ongoing dispute over the ownership of the Liancourt Rocks, which have been controlled by South Korea since 1945.
A US-Korea summit will be held in Washington on August 25. According to the South Korean president, the "renewal of the alliance" between South Korea and the United States will be one of the topics. South Korean media suggest that this means expansion of responsibility of the American military contingent on the Korean peninsula and Seoul’s more active involvement in containing China.
Lee Jae-Myung became the first South Korean president to ever visit Japan rather than the United States on his first trip abroad, apart from multilateral forums. He said this move will contribute to the development of trilateral cooperation between Washington, Seoul and Tokyo. Commenting on his August 23 summit with Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba, Lee Jae-Myung said that he does not intend to abandon economic and security cooperation with Japan due to historical problems which he said could be resolved simultaneously.