[Ionawr 13, KOREA WAVE]Until the Moon Jae-in administration, the South Korean government favored “strategic ambiguity” in the US-China competition for hegemony. However, since the inauguration of the Yun Sung-ryeol administration in May last year, he has developed a diplomatic policy that places the highest priority on “strengthening and developing the alliance between the United States and South Korea,” while made it clear that he intended to cooperate with China.
In May last year, South Korea joined the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework (IPEF), a new economic zone initiative led by the United States, as a founding member. We are also discussing. The South Korean government recently unveiled the final draft of its “Korean version” of the Indo-Pacific strategy, announcing its willingness to cooperate with the US Indo-Pacific strategy.
South Korean and foreign experts generally agree that the ultimate goal of the US Indo-Pacific strategy is to prevent China from expanding its influence in the region.
Japan was actually the first country to offer ideas in the process of shaping the US Indo-Pacific strategy. In relation to their Indo-Pacific strategy, Japan and the United States have both described China as a “status quo-changing force that challenges the existing order” and “the greatest strategic challenge of all time.”
In particular, since its inauguration in January 2021, the US Biden administration has named China, along with North Korea, as a threat to regional security, and has sought to strengthen security cooperation with Japan and South Korea.
In other words, the Chinese authorities, who had been paying close attention to this series of processes, began to attack Japan and South Korea following the inauguration of the third term by Xi Jinping, General Secretary of the Communist Party of China, in October. last year, and the recent change in the highest diplomatic position, he decided to develop diplomacy. There is speculation that he might have chosen “Anti-epidemic Revenge” as his first “work”.
Lee Dong-gyu, a researcher at the Asan Institute for Policy Research, said, “China criticized South Korea and Japan that set up a visa issue because it flaunted its influence in the region and said, ‘When South Korea aligns with the U.S. . The intention is to show that it is possible to put pressure on people.”
Professor Park Won Gon of Ewha Womans University also said, “There is no political meaning for the Chinese authorities to take retaliatory measures against South Korea and Japan. It means that it considers it a nation that participates in the sanctions .”
