S. Korea dissolves spy-data-sharing accord with Japan
Decision worries U.S. as allies’ feud takes eyes away from N. Korea tests
TOKYO — South Korea on Thursday scrapped an agreement to share military intelligence with Japan, escalating the stakes in the U.S. allies’ dispute over trade and historical grievances.
The decision was met with concern in the United States, which views intelligence sharing between the allies regarding North Korea as critical.
Kim You-geun of the National Security Council in Seoul said Japan’s decision to drop South Korea from a list of trusted trading partners this month, citing security issues, “brought about fundamental changes to the environment for security cooperation between the two countries.”
“Under these circumstances, the Government of the Republic of Korea decided that maintaining this agreement, which was
signed to facilitate the exchange of sensitive military information, does not serve our national interest.”
The pact, known as the General Security of Military Information Agreement, was signed in 2016 in the face of a growing threat from North Korea’s nuclear weapons program.
South Korea’s decision comes a day after the foreign ministers of both countries met at a trilateral event in China, where they agreed to keep talking but did not announce any progress in the dispute.
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, speaking to reporters today, said South Korea’s decision damages mutual trust.
“We will continue to closely coordinate with the U.S. to ensure regional peace and prosperity, as well as Japan’s security,” he said, adding that he will continue to urge South Korea “to keep promises” made in the past.
Japanese Foreign Minister Taro Kono called the decision “extremely regrettable” and said Tokyo would lodge a firm protest.
The Pentagon on Thursday expressed “strong concern and disappointment” in the collapse of the agreement.
“We strongly believe that the integrity of our mutual defense and security ties must persist despite frictions in other areas of the South Korea-Japan relationship,” said Lt. Col. Dave Eastburn, a Pentagon spokesman. “We’ll continue to pursue bilateral and trilateral defense and security cooperation where possible.”
The United States had urged the two allies to settle their differences, with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo stressing their “incredibly important” cooperation on North Korea.
But some critics say President Donald Trump’s administration should have acted sooner and more forcefully to defuse the row.
“This will only get worse, and it’s only American leadership that can bring the parties together,” tweeted Harry Kazianis, senior director at the Center for the National Interest in Washington.
Some experts had expected that South Korean President Moon Jae-in would have shied away from canceling the agreement for the sake of his country’s alliance with the United States. But Foreign Minister Kang Kyung-hwa said the decision is “an issue separate from the alliance.”
“Cooperation on the alliance front will continue to be strengthened,” she said. “This is a decision we made because of situations triggered by the issue of trust between South Korea and Japan.”
SENSITIVE TIME
The collapse of the deal comes at a particularly sensitive moment in the region. North Korea has conducted six ballistic missile tests in about a month, and Japan and South Korea regularly share analysis about such tests with each other as well as with the United States.
“Our hope was that it would cut down the time that the United States had to play the middle man on intelligence sharing in a crisis,” said Kelly Magsamen, who helped work on the agreement when she was the principal deputy assistant secretary of defense for Asian and Pacific Security Affairs in President Barack Obama’s administration. “It’s absolutely essential. In a military crisis, such as a potentially hostile ballistic missile launch, we aren’t going to have time to play referee between Tokyo and Seoul.”
Analysts said that in the immediate term, both Japan and South Korea would be able to obtain important intelligence information about North Korean missile launches through the United States. But they noted that the South Korean withdrawal effectively prevented closer cooperation in the future.
“My main worry is not necessarily the intelligence loss, but the symbolic difficulties of ever restarting serious security cooperation again,” said Jonathan B. Miller, senior fellow at the Japan Institute of International Affairs.
Either way, analysts say the biggest losers may be the South Koreans.
“South Korea is essentially shooting itself in the foot on this,” said Jeffrey Hornung, an analyst with the RAND Corp.
“It’s purely a political move,” he added.
“Not renewing GSOMIA is a stunningly stupid decision by South Korea that will hurt itself more than anyone else,” tweeted Mintaro Oba, a speechwriter at West Wing Writers and a former Korea desk officer at the State Department. “Seoul will pay a very grave price for this in Washington. It is not in keeping with a constructive approach to the U.S.-Korea alliance.”
And the biggest winner is likely to be North Korea, experts say.
“With Pyongyang bolstering its military capability through repeated weapons tests, intelligence sharing is more important than ever to counter nuclear threats from North Korea,” said Lee Horyung, a researcher at Korea Institute for Defense Analyses in Seoul, a state-run think tank.
“South Korea’s withdrawal from GSOMIA undermines trilateral security cooperation between the United States and its two most important allies in East Asia at a critical time,” Lee said, adding that it also would send a “wrong signal to North Korea.”
The dispute between Japan and South Korea flared over compensation for wartime forced labor. It has since escalated into tit-for-tat measures fueled by nationalist sentiment in both countries, with moves that have affected South Korea’s electronics industry, Japan’s consumer goods and more.
The dispute began with consecutive South Korean Supreme Court rulings last year ordering Japanese companies to pay compensation to victims of forced labor during Japan’s occupation of Korea from 1910-45.
The judgments infuriated Japan’s government, which gave South Korea an economic aid package as final compensation and settlement of historical grievances when the countries restored diplomatic relations in 1965.
Japan’s response was to strike at South Korea’s status as a trusted trading partner, first imposing export controls on three chemicals vital for South Korea’s world-leading semiconductor industry and then removing the country from a “white list” of 27 nations that are trusted to import goods that may have military uses without jumping through bureaucratic hurdles.
Tokyo says it took the trade measures on national security grounds because of lax South Korean export controls, but the moves were widely viewed as retaliation.
In South Korea, bitterness about the country’s treatment during the Japanese occupation remains. There have been widespread boycotts of Japanese goods, and fewer South Korean tourists are visiting Japan.
Information for this article was contributed by Simon Denyer and Min Joo Kim of The Washington Post; by Hyung-Jin Kim, Lee Jin-man, Mari Yamaguchi and Yuri Kageyama of The Associated Press; and by Choe Sang-Hun, Motoko Rich and Edward Wong of The New York Times.