As long suggested by the U.S., there are indications that Japan and South Korea may cooperate on resurrecting a planned military information sharing agreement that was scuttled in 2012. This is a good thing; the U.S. should stay focused on making an agreement happen.
Presidents Barack Obama and Park Geun-hye agreed during their April summit to improve allied defenses against the North Korean threat by recognizing “the importance of trilateral information sharing among the United States, Republic of Korea, and Japan.” During last week’s Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore, Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel, with South Korean and Japanese counterparts Kim Kwan-jin and Itsunori Onodera, agreed to set up a working-level group to assess how to do so.
Although not the breakthrough Washington sought, the agreement provides a preliminary means for compartmentalizing trilateral allied security cooperation from continued tense relations between South Korea and Japan. Recent private discussions by the author with government officials in Seoul similarly suggested a South Korean intent to move forward on a General Security of Military Information Agreement (GSOMIA) with Japan.
Such an agreement was scheduled for June 2012, but Seoul pulled the plug shortly before signing due to strong negative public and legislative reactions. There were widespread mischaracterizations that the agreement would “give access without restriction to military facilities and intelligence…with a country that invaded our nation in the past.”
The South Korean–Japanese GSOMIA is actually an anodyne legal framework of required methods to protect classified information, with Seoul always retaining authority for deciding what data are shared. The accord is critically important, however, because it would allow trilateral real-time exchange of classified information about North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs, potential military incursions, and terrorist or cyber attacks.
Removing the intelligence-sharing constraints would be in South Korea’s national interests, since it would enable access to North Korean threat data from Japan’s high-tech intelligence satellites, AEGIS ships, and early-warning and anti-submarine aircraft. Currently, for example, U.S. military officers must turn off live feeds from South Korean or Japanese sensors when representatives of the other ally enter a command or intelligence center.
Augmented intelligence sharing is particularly important for improving allied defenses against North Korea’s growing missile and nuclear threats. To date, South Korea has refused to integrate its Korea Air and Missile Defense (KAMD) system into the more comprehensive and effective allied ballistic missile defense system.
Despite placing its populace at greater risk to North Korean nuclear, chemical, and biological warheads, South Korea remains suspicious about linking its KAMD to the allied system due to domestic resistance to increasing interaction with Japan and concerns about aggravating China. Beijing has expressed concern about a broader missile defense system whose capabilities could go beyond checking only North Korean missiles. Seoul seeks to prevent irritating Beijing, its largest trading partner and a key player for eventual Korean unification.
Washington should continue policies to augment bilateral and trilateral military cooperation efforts with Seoul and Tokyo, particularly in missile defense against the North Korean threat. But such efforts will remain hampered by Japanese resistance to additional steps toward addressing its wartime past and South Korean insistence that Tokyo do so.
