(Newswire.net — May 22, 2017) — The relationship between China and South Korea, which had long been in a honeymoon phase, has now reached its coldest point ever, due to the installation of the THAAD missile defense system in South Korea. China is showing no signs of letting up on retaliatory measures. It is bullying South Korea through a wide range of tactics, including the travel industry, boycotts of products made by South Korean companies, and the world cup preliminaries. South Korea’s new president, Moon Jae-in, held a telephone conference with General Secretary Xi Jinping to discuss the THAAD issue, during which the China side gleefully offered the opinion that, “If there are no further provocations by North Korea, then the problem is solved.” However, it is not China that is protecting South Korea from the North Korean thread. It is the US troops stationed in Japan.
South Korea’s dependence on exports is 40.46% (32nd), compared to China’s 19.21% (115th). Among developed countries, South Korea stands out for its dependence on exports, and over 25% of its exports consist of transactions with China. The Export-Import Bank of Korea’s Overseas Economic Research Institute has calculated that the retaliations by China over the THAAD missile defense system will result in losses of a maximum of 90 million dollars over the next 1-2 years.
If China and South Korea are to repair their strained relations, the chances are high that they will join hands over anti-Japanese policies and anti-Japanese propaganda. South Korea is playing the “comfort women” card to incite completely unrelated countries, and South Korean immigrant communities all over the world are trying to instill an image of Japan as the “axis of evil”, so to speak, in unrelated countries. Furthermore, they are failing to implement their duties as stipulated by the South Korea-Japan Comfort Women Agreement signed at the end of 2015, and show no signs of abating with anti-Japanese propaganda, using the comfort women as a tool for creating political strife. In addition to the world’s second largest economy, China, South Korea is now making an enemy of the world’s third largest economy, Japan. They fail to understand that as a country which is so heavily dependent on trade, this is not a wise policy. Listening to the newly elected President Moon’s remarks, one can see that anti-Japanese sentiment in South Korea has not changed one bit in the last few decades.
Meanwhile, China is holding its annual events celebrating the anniversary of China’s victory over Japan as usual. In addition, it is citing the past acts of Japanese soldiers during the Nanjing massacre as an example of Japanese “cruelty”, but no one thinks of the country that became the most peaceful post-war economic superpower as cruel. Furthermore, the president of a certain Japanese hotel chain recently claimed through his book that the Nanjing incident was fabricated, causing sparks to fly between Japan and China. According to the book, “The population of Nanjing at the time was only 200,000, so how could 300,000 people have been massacred?” If this is true, then China is using a fabricated event to stoke anti-Japanese sentiment.
To the citizens of our democratic country, the most important thing is world peace and stability. To that purpose, we need to open the eyes of South Korea, whose relationship with China is already strained, thereby isolating China.