[특파원칼럼/문병기]Why Harris brought up the Taiwan issue during his visit to Korea

US demands ‘strategic clarity’ from alliance
Defense of Taiwan, emerging as a new test bed for South Korea-U.S. relations

Byung-ki Moon, Correspondent for Washington

“(North Korea and Taiwan) do not see the two issues as either or both. I don’t think it matters which one is the bigger concern or which alliance is more important.”

On the 27th of last month (local time), ahead of Vice President Kamala Harris’s visit to Korea, a senior official in the Joe Biden administration said this to a question about ‘President Seok-Yeol Yoon said that the main security threat is North Korea and that it should be given priority’. “I agree with and condemn President Yun’s opinion on North Korea’s ballistic missile test launch,” the official said. But we are concerned about the Taiwan Strait.” “It is important to work with allies and partners,” he said. This is why Vice President Harris brought (Taiwan issue) to every meeting.” It emphasized the need for South Korea’s cooperation with Taiwan, implying that it may not always give North Korea’s nuclear weapons a priority in the event of China’s invasion of Taiwan.

In fact, during a tour of Korea and Japan, which took place right after President Biden said in an interview with US CBS broadcast last month that “US troops will defend Taiwan if China invades Taiwan,” Vice President Harris brought the Taiwan issue to the fore. After meeting with Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida (岸田文雄), he said, “I reaffirmed the importance of maintaining peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait.” a key element of the

Why did the Biden administration seek allies and request cooperation in the defense of Taiwan, saying that whenever China protests, “the ‘one China principle’ has not changed?” First, China’s military pressure on Taiwan is becoming visible, but there are no practical measures that the US can take right away. Although the US House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan threatened China by conducting a containment exercise, the US showed a lower level of response than in the past, when a single carrier squadron and a destroyer passed through the Taiwan Strait at a time lag.

China has greatly increased its missile power, including hypersonic missiles that can strike aircraft carriers, in order to deter U.S. intervention in the event of an invasion of Taiwan, but the United States has yet to come up with a countermeasure to neutralize it. Analysts say that in a situation where neither military response cards nor means of economic pressure were adequate, they chose diplomatic means to pressure China through trilateral cooperation, the key pillar of the Indo-Pacific Alliance.

There is a contradiction in the Biden administration, which maintains ‘strategic ambiguity’ about Taiwan, to demand strategic clarity about its will to defend Taiwan and condemn China. If South Korea, which is still highly dependent on the Chinese economy, reveals its will to defend Taiwan, the consequences could be so great that it is difficult to compare it with the deployment of the THAAD (High Altitude Area Defense System). However, the Taiwan issue is highly likely to put the ROK-U.S. alliance to a new test, as the US and opposition parties are demanding the defense of Taiwan through alliance unity.

The Yun Seok-yeol administration made a pledge to abolish the ‘strategic ambiguity’ about China. In an interview with CNN on the 25th of last month, President Yoon said, “Our position on the China issue is not ambiguous.” As the tales surrounding door stepping show, an ‘candid and straightforward’ answer is not always the best. It is even more so when it comes to remarks about diplomatic issues that will be followed by a huge aftermath.

Byung-ki Moon, Washington Correspondent [email protected]

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