President Lee Myung-bak returned last month from his first trip to Japan as head of state and his second summit meeting with Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda. In only four months as president, Lee probably has had more interaction with his Japanese counterpart than the prior South Korean government had in its last year in office. These meetings are part of an overall effort to improve bilateral relations which fell into a bad state of disrepair in part because of former prime minister Junichiro Koizumi's visits to the Yasukuni shrine, but also because of an ideological anti-Japanism in vogue in the last South Korean government. President Lee should be commended for reversing this trend. Improved Seoul-Tokyo relations are important not only for South Korean interests, but also a useful means of consolidating the overall trilateral U.S.-South Korea-Japan relationship.

In all the discussions today about regional architectures for Asia, the one time-honored multilateral political and security relationship in Asia that succeeded has been that between Washington, Seoul, and Tokyo. From the days of Park Chung-hee, the trilateral relationship was the bulwark of cold war security in Northeast Asia; it later housed the three most significant market economies in the region; and then later became the trio of exemplary liberal-democracies in a region of the world that has not yet readily accepted these values.

The agenda for trilateral cooperation into the future is rich. A traditional item would be planning for any contingency that might occur vis a vis North Korea. But the three could also coordinate their disaster relief operations and development assistance to places as near as Burma and as far away as Africa. The three allies could work with China on energy security given Russia's increasing provocative behavior (while at the same time Seoul and Tokyo could educate the U.S. on efficient energy usage). They could build on their strong record of participation in peacekeeping operations around the world and coordinate on sea lines of communication, possibly even involving India and China.

What is distinct about these forms of cooperation is that slowly but surely the three-way cooperation begins to provide not just national benefits, but a public or collective good for the region, if not the world. There is no more certain way to enhance South Korea's global status, as President Lee desires, than for it to be seen as a provider of public good to the world.

The bright outlook for trilateral cooperation contrasts with the shadow cast recently over South Korea-China relations. Since normalization was celebrated between these two countries in 1992, there always seems to be an incident every few years that dampens relations. These included some recent trade disputes (e.g., the "garlic war") and the attempted Chinese usurping of the history of Koguryo a few years ago. The violent actions by Chinese students against peaceful Korean demonstrators at the Olympic torch relay in Seoul last month have gone a long way to changing elite and popular attitudes about Beijing. In the weeks following the incident, South Korean parliamentarians and government officials expressed to me personally their rage and anger at China's actions. Some described the behavior of the Chinese students as "barbaric." Others confided that Beijing has shown its "true face" in relations with South Korea. When news later surfaced that similar "counter-demonstrations" by overseas Chinese students at the Tokyo and Canberra torch relays not only may have been encouraged by Beijing, but also may have been directly sponsored (in the form of rumored 4,000 yen payments in Japan), the outrage from all corners of the government grew.

In the broader scheme of international relations, small incidents like this do matter. They cause governments to think hard about the reliability of a particular neighbor. In the case of China, perhaps what most impacts South Korea's strategic thinking in the future is not that China constitutes some new military threat. Instead, Seoul has become much more sensitized to how differences in political values do matter in bilateral relations with Beijing. Chinese parochialism and nationalism, under an illiberal and opaque regime as Beijing still is, can be potentially harmful to South Korean national interests. The answer, of course, is not disengagement from China, which is unrealistic. There is no denying that Seoul will approach all aspects of relations with Beijing with greater scrutiny and a degree of disenchantment.

Victor Cha is Director of Asian Studies at Georgetown University and former director of Asian Affairs for the U.S. National Security Council. He is now adjunct Senior Fellow at the Pacific Council for International Policy in Los Angeles.