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A Korea expert attached to the U.S. Congress has told Japan's Sankei Shimbun that Korean criticism of Japan hurt not just Seoul-Tokyo ties but also showed Seoul at odds with the essence of the U.S.-Japan alliance. Congressional adviser Larry A. Niksch told the paper's Tuesday edition there were concerns that the three-way Korea-U.S.-Japan alliance -- the pillar of post-war U.S. policy in Asia -- could collapse.
Niksch said Seoul and Washington were clearly at loggerheads over Japan's role in the region. When Korean President Roh Moo-hyun slammed Japan's constitutional amendments and the deployment of the Japanese Self Defense Force (SDF) overseas as "the rebirth of militarism," Niksch said, it flew in the face of the Bush administration's belief that Japan should take a regional military role as a "normal country". He said Roh's comments seemed to deny Washington and Tokyo's basic line of beefing up bilateral security ties.
Niksch said the U.S. had begged for the deployment of Japanese forces to Iraq. When Seoul then said Japan must not do something but Korea can, that too went against basic policy in U.S.-Japanese security cooperation. Seoul's attacks were serious enough to harden into opposition to the entire three-way alliance - a system the U.S. has maintained in East Asia since the end of World War II.
Asked about the Dokdo Islets row between Korea and Japan, he said that because the rocks themselves were of almost no strategic value, it would be too dangerous to fight over them seriously. He said the most appropriate thing was to submit the issue to the International Court of Justice.
(englishnews@chosun.com )
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