By Ankit Panda
There is a flurry of diplomatic activity in Northeast Asia this week, but are things really changing?
As Clint Richards notes over at the Tokyo Report, it’s hard not to take note of the fact that as Xi Jinping and Park Geun-hye meet in Seoul, Japan and North Korea seem to be getting closer to resolving their long-standing dispute over Japanese abductees. Japan has moved to reduce some sanctions on North Korea in a tit-for-tat show of goodwill for the North making good on its side of the negotiations over the Japanese abductees. Meanwhile, Japan just announced a resolution on collective self-defense that only serves to deepen the Abe government’s isolation from Zhongnanhai and the Blue House. Despite appearances this week, it is worth noting that there is no major realignment in Northeast Asian international relations.
Appearances would suggest three trends: 1) China is moving away from Pyongyang and towards Seoul, 2) Japan is winning influence in North Korea, filling the vacuum previously occupied by China, and 3) South Korea will join China against Japan. Diplomatic rhetoric, particularly between China and South Korea, has been warm. Qiu Guohong, the Chinese ambassador in Seoul, declared that Xi’s visit was set to become “the most important milestone” in the bilateral diplomatic history of the two countries — a grand declaration by any yardstick. Similarly, Chinese media proclaimed that relations were “at their best in history.” Furthermore, this visit marked the first time in a couple of decades that a Chinese president traveled to Seoul without a stop in Pyongyang on either leg of the journey — a slight against Kim Jong-un’s government to be sure. Similarly, Japan’s relative diplomatic success with North Korea — a country known for its duplicity and diplomatic abrasiveness — over the abductees issue suggests that something in brewing between Tokyo and Pyongyang.
Read the full story at The Diplomat