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President Roh Moo-hyun said Tuesday the power structure in East Asia will shift depending on what choices Korea makes.
At a graduation ceremony of the Korea Third Military Academy on Tuesday, Roh said Korea's new role was of a stabilizer for peace and prosperity not just on the Korean Peninsula, but in East Asia as a whole. "Korea will calculate and cooperate if need be, and move forward with its proper authority and responsibility," he said.
His comments were being read as a pointed reference to the country's alliances with the U.S. and Japan rather than a mere statement of principle. Among core figures in the administration, there is growing dissatisfaction with U.S. and Japanese policies in East Asia, including North Korea.
A high-ranking government official said the East Asian order in which Korea plays one leg of the three-way alliance with the U.S. and Japan was a product of the Cold War. He said Korea could not be locked into such a framework forever. In other words, Korea wants to extract itself from a standoff centered on the Korean Peninsula between a ¡°southern alliance¡± of South Korea, the U.S. and Japan and a ¡°northern alliance¡± of North Korea, China and Russia.
Another high-ranking government official cautioned the president was not talking about breaking the Korea-U.S. alliance. But as tensions rise between the U.S. and Japan on one hand and China and North Korea on the other, Seoul will not be cornered into an exclusive alliance with Washington, he added.
He said the East Asian confrontation between three-way alliances needed to come to an end. President Roh believes the major East Asian powers need to move toward a multilateral security system based on the Korea-U.S. alliance and is asking the U.S. to play a positive role in this, he said. "The president believes that if the current situation is left as it is, it might lead to a new Cold War structure in East Asia," he said.
When Roh met with U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on Sunday, he told his visitor that while the U.S. was in a position to view the development of a particular order in East Asia as a strategic tool, for Korea it was a matter of destiny. That amounted to asking Washington for an alliance that was inclusive, not exclusive, the official explained.
The official said Roh was deeply concerned that Japan is hostile to both China and North Korea and raising the level of tension. These concerns formed part of the background to President Roh¡¯s new doctrine of Korea-Japan relations, he added.
President Roh¡¯s address today can be seen as a warning that Seoul cannot be counted on if the U.S. and Japan insist on a strategy of pressure on China and North Korea. It was in an address to another graduation ceremony, of the Air Force Academy on March 8, that the president made clear his opposition to the deployment of the USFK in possible conflicts with China.
(englishnews@chosun.com )
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