hankyoreh

US Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel

By Park Byong-su, senior staff writer in Singapore

South Korea, the US, and Japan have agreed to set up a working-level group to discuss ways to share military information. Since this implies that the three countries will move forward with building a framework for sharing information among them, it is expected that this may also lead to increased trilateral military cooperation.

South Korean Defense Minister Kim Kwan-jin, US Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, and Japanese Defense Minister Itsunori Onodera, held a trilateral meeting on May 31 during the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore, subsequently releasing a joint statement to the media. “The three ministers emphasized their fundamental position that they do not accept North Korea as a nuclear-armed state and agreed to closely coordinate to deter North Korean provocations,” the statement said.

“We need to discuss how, and to what extent, we will share information related to North Korean nuclear weapons and missiles. We are going to set up a working-level group to do this,” said an official with the South Korean Defense Ministry on condition of anonymity. The information-sharing agreement among the three countries could take the shape of a memorandum of understanding (MOU).

Signing a trilateral information-sharing agreement has long been on the agenda of the US and Japan. The US has been urging its allies South Korea and Japan to get over historical issues to cooperate on security as part of its efforts to counter the rise of China. Defense Secretary Hagel earlier said that the meeting with the Defense Ministers of South Korea and Japan was the most important part of the Shangri-La Dialogue schedule. With Japan also in a confrontation with China, ushering South Korea into a trilateral agreement with the US and Japan is becoming more important in terms of security strategy.

At first, the US and Japan had hoped for more specificity in the joint press statement, sources say. “I understand that the South Korean position - that, because of negative domestic sentiment about military cooperation with Japan, these plans should be pursued with transparency only once conditions are right - was communicated to the US and Japan,” said a senior official at the South Korean Defense Ministry.

This agreement suggests that military cooperation between South Korea, the US, and Japan is advancing to the next stage. Each year, the three countries have been holding joint military exercises in the waters around the Korean peninsula. The South Korean government describes these as search and rescue exercises, but a press release from the US Defense Ministry says that their intent is to improve interoperability and communication with the South Korean navy and Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force. Augmented with cooperation on intelligence, this could lay the groundwork for much more concrete military cooperation among the three countries.

However, some critics argue that strengthening military cooperation between the three countries would serve as an opportunity to give Japan more of a voice in affairs on the Korean peninsula. Others are concerned that if cooperation is increased in a way that irritates China, South Korea‘s relations with China could be inadvertently strained.

Suspicions are also being voiced that the issue of information sharing between the three countries is inextricably tied to efforts to set up a missile defense network linking South Korea, the US, and Japan.

“There is no reason why South Korea’s missile defense system has to be the same as the US system, though the South Korea and the US are in agreement about pursuing interoperability between the systems. However, we have never discussed this issue with Japan,” said Defense Minister Kim Kwan-jin, denying these allegations.

But with South Korea and the US seeking to link key functions - including detection, command, communication, and control - in order to guarantee the interoperability of their missile defense systems, suspicions about South Korea joining the US missile defense system are unlikely to go away.

Previously, Kim Kwan-jin and Chuck Hagel held a meeting at which they officially announced that the final decision about the timing and conditions of the transfer of wartime operational control (OPCON), would be made during the 46th US-ROK Security Consultative Meeting (SCM), in October.

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