The geopolitical situation has been undergoing dramatic changes in the Northeast Asin region. Amid the rapidly changing geopolitical landscape, Minister Park Jin of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs has been credited with elevating relations among Korea and the United States to the highest-ever level.
Minister Park, quitting his job as the first foreign minister of the President Yoon Suk-yeol government, is to run for the general elections slated for April 2024.
He has been praised for restoring relations with Japan and elevated partnerships among Korea, the United States and Japan to heightened levels.
He has been lauded for his contribution to transforming the tripartite partnership to a security cooperation regime based on qualitive changes to jointly cope with diverse threats in the region, following the Camp David summit in August.
North Korea has begun to open its doors, which had been completely closed due to the spread of the Covid-19 pandemic.
The North attempted to solidify relations with China and Russia by holding a surprising summit talk with Russian President Putin.
In March, the President Yoon government came up with a third-party payment option, in which compensation Japanese companies will have to pay Korean victims of forced labor can be reimbursed by a Korean foundation, who raises funds instead of the former.
The government’s step came in accordance with its decision to mend relations with Japan, which have been poor for several years over the issue of compensating forced labor victims.
The government stressed the step as its determination to make Korean-Japanese relationship future-oriented, but critics accused it of “half solution,” since related Japanese firms do not participate in person and they have no direct apology.
Eleven of 15 forced labor victims who were involved in the supreme court’s final ruling had accepted the government’s solution.
The third-party compensation option is still remaining unstable a little, but it contributed to restoring Korean-Japanese relations in a fast fashion.
Bilateral conflicts, such as restoring Korean-Japanese summit talks for shuttle diplomacy, restrictions against exports to Korea, imposed by Japan, and discord over General Security of Military Information Agreement (GSOMIA) signed by the two nations, have been then resolved.
Japan’s release of treated radioactive water from its damaged Fukushima power plant into the Pacific Ocean starting in August has no longer turned into a bilateral thorny issue.
The reason was that Japan accepted Korea’s inspection team to tour the site and Korea released a report that Japan’s plan to release the radioactive water complied with international levels set out by the IAEA.
Minister Park’s role was deemed outstanding. President Yoon and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida had summit talks on seven occasions in 2023, thus resuming cooperative consultative regimes between the two nations that had been stopped for a long period of time.
Korean-Japanese relations’ shifting into a full-fledged cooperation phase has completed the last link in the tripartite partnership among Korea, the United States and Japan.
The U.S. side’s blessing of the deal, described by U.S. President Joe Biden as an “epoch-making chapter,” gave a boost to momentum to solidify the tripartite partnership.
In August, U.S. President Biden invited President Yoon and Japanese Prime Minister Kishida to the U.S. presidential retreat in Camp David.
It was the first time the three countries had arranged a summit that wasn’t on the sidelines of multi-lateral international meetings.
The agreement on “Commitment to Consult,” reached in the Camp David Summit, calls for exchanging information, fine-tuning messages and consulting ways of coping in the case of a crisis that could an impact on the security of the three counties in the region.
Some experts say the upcoming diplomacy team of the President Yoon government, including a replacement of Minister Park, is paying more attention to multi-lateral relations, particularly with China and Russia, which have showed signs of ramping up relations with North Korea.
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