Trilateral Summit to Help Cope with Crisis

Substance More Important than Symbolism

Leaders of Korea, China and Japan met on Dec. 13 to discuss ways of jointly coping with the current economic crisis. The leaders also talked about steps to tackle the spreading concern over North Korea's ambition to develop nuclear weapons. Even China expressed regret over the North's recent move to stay away from the six-party talks, designed to help resolve the nuclear standoff.
The fact that leaders of the three nations met for the first time by themselves says much about Northeast Asia.
It is significant that the leaders met to rack their brains, as the three nations combined will have considerable influence over the international community in view of their economic power and political clout.
President Lee Myung-bak, Japanese Prime Minister Taro Aso and Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao agreed on the need to set up a partnership alliance for comprehensive cooperation in many areas, including finance in particular.
They adopted a joint declaration toward that end, which featured an expansion of currency swaps among the three countries.
The establishment of the swap agreement is likely to help the nation address the lingering financial crunch since it has been suffering from severe fluctuations in the financial market involving the exchange rate of the Korean won against the U.S. dollar.
As a matter of fact, the Korean won has begun to gain strength against the greenback since the leaders came to this agreement.
The won/dollar rate, which hovered around 1,450 won recently fell below 1,300, sending a positive signal to the market.
One might almost feel tempted to thank the global financial turmoil for finally bringing the top officials of these "close-yet-distant" neighbors together for talks other than on the sidelines of other international conferences.
Little wonder symbolism dominated substance in the three-way summit in Fukuoka, Japan. President Lee, Japanese Prime Minister Aso and Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao focused their talks on how their countries could help Asia and the world get out of the looming recession, but went little further than touching on some principles.
Korea may be the most immediate beneficiary of the tripartite summit meeting, which endorsed Seoul's recent currency-swap deals with Tokyo and Beijing totaling $60 billion. President Lee seems to have proposed the summit with such a plan in mind.
Also promising was their joint commitment to expedite the so-called Chiang Mai Initiative to further boost currency swaps in East Asia. Premier Aso's proposal to expand the $80-billion swap fund, if realized, would open the door wider for Asian economic cooperation.
Whether that could develop into an Asian Monetary Fund -- let alone an East Asian economic community -- may be a story for the distant future, however. There are considerable gaps in economic, social and political situations and systems even among the three Northeast Asian countries.
One of the two major obstacles will therefore be how the three can narrow these differences and forge more substantive ties. Korea, Japan and China account for 75 percent of East Asia's gross domestic product and about 17 percent of the global GDP. The combined GDP of the world's second-, fourth- and 13th-largest economies rivals that of Germany, Britain and France combined -- with the foreign reserves of the Asian three nearing three times that of the big-three European economies.
This is why they need to come up with at least a report containing their common positions on behalf of Asia against those of America and Europe at an international conference next year to discuss the revamping of the global economic order.
The other stumbling block on the way to the three Northeast Asian countries' march to the future is, as everybody knows, their pasts, which also explains why people in the three countries are showing more interest in what has not been discussed than what has.
The historical and territorial issues that separate the three from one another were seen in the bilateral meeting between China and Japan, in which Aso protested the intrusion earlier this month of Chinese ships near the disputed Senkaku islets that Japan controls. Lee, however, failed to mention the Japanese Foreign Ministry's recent claims on its Web site of sovereignty over the Dokdo islets that Korea controls, published in 10 different languages, a sharp increase from the previous three.
President Lee's policy of separating history-territory issues from a broader cooperative framework may not be entirely desirable, but is inevitable. This, however, should not mean he should refrain from speaking out when he could, as his Japanese counterpart clearly showed.
Korea is a distant third among the three Northeast Asian countries in terms of national power and has suffered for a long time and is still suffering in some ways. The nation's survival and prosperity will hinge much on effective cooperation with its closest neighbors.
No less important for Korea in not repeating past mistakes will be to make its historical and territorial positions clear, not emotionally and occasionally, but more logically and consistently. nw

Korean President Lee Myung-bak joins hands with Japanese Prime Minister Taro Aso and Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao in a trilateral summit in Fukuoka, Japan on Dec. 13.