China-Russia Summit and South Korea's Diplomatic and Security Challenges

Hyun-ik Hong

hyunik@sejong.org

Senior Research Fellow

The Sejong Institute

   As the war in Ukraine is becoming a prolonged war, Chinese President Xi Jinping visited Moscow in March 20 to strengthen bilateral cooperation, to show anti-American solidarity, promise a joint response, and agree to promote mutual interests. However, in current situation, China's military support to Russia or the cease-fire in the Ukraine has not been publicly discussed. Although China's trade with Russia has increased 116% over the past decade, it is believed to be practical calculation that it is still one-fourth of the U.S.-China trade volume and one-eighth of the trade volume with China and the EU.

Though China-Russia relations are showing some limitations, it is defending North Korea, which is making provocations, while clarifying its intentions to strengthen its anti-American alliance and intercepting NATO's strengthening cooperation with the East and Asia-Pacific regions. The South Korean government seems to be trying to strengthen relations with the U.S. and Japan, while simplifying the international order into a new Cold War, neglecting relations with Russia and China, and reducing dialogue or provocation control with North Korea. The South Korean government should review its policy stance and implement more reasonable foreign and security focused national strategy.

First, the Government should not only blame North Korea for its serious provocations in the future, but also be responsible for the government for failing to prevent provocations, and it is also required to have thorough measures to minimize damages in advance.

Second, the Government is currently decided the current international situation as a new Cold War and is focusing only on the strengthening of the Korea-U.S. alliance and security cooperation between South Korea, the U.S. and Japan. However it must be noted that the current international order is new Cold War and it has clear difference from the old Cold War.

Third, it is necessary to re-confirm that focusing only on strenthening relation with the U.S. and Japan while neglecting relations with China and Russia will only make it difficult to resolve the North Korean nuclear issue, establishing peace regime in Korean Peninsula, and peaceful unification, and restore the balance of diplomacy to an appropriate level.

Finally, as North Korea is provoking to attack with nuclear weapons at any time, guarateeing basic national security requires institutional strengthening to the extent that U.S. strategic assets are regularly deployed

In order to guarantee basic national security, regular deployment of U.S. strategic assets with strengthened institutional agreement is required in Korea-U.S. summit on April 26 to prevent North Korea's continuous provocation to attack with nuclear weapons. Hence, the U.S., which aims to check China, should ensure Korea's economic interests in the IRA law and semiconductor, and battery sectors to ensure economic interests among its allies.