South Korean Foreign Minister Yun Byung-se dismissed public concerns here Thursday that the United States may be placing more emphasis on its alliance with Japan than that with Seoul.
“The South Korea-U.S. alliance and the U.S.-Japan alliance are not a zero-sum game,” he told Yonhap News Agency after addressing a U.N. development forum.
The two are mutually beneficial in terms of regional security, he added. Formally, the U.S. government maintains its longstanding position not to directly intervene in stand-offs between two of its top allies in Northeast Asia over territory and shared history.
Senior U.S. officials, however, caused South Koreans recently to raise their eyebrows with comments understood to be supporting Japan’s stance.
In a written interview with Japan’s Yomiuri Shimbun, Defense Secretary Ashton Carter was quoted as saying both Seoul and Tokyo must “look toward the future.”
His remarks represent Washington’s official position as it seeks to strengthen trilateral security cooperation.
But his words came at a sensitive time when South Koreans are upset about the Shinzo Abe administration’s intensifying claim to Dokdo, the Seoul-controlled islets in the East Sea, in new school textbooks and a diplomatic document.
Japan’s conservative government also refuses to acknowledge full responsibility for the nation’s wartime atrocities including the sexual enslavement of South Korean and other Asian women during World War II.
In a separate interview with Yomiuri, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Daniel Russel also supported Abe’s characterization of the sexual slavery as “human trafficking.” (Yonhap)
