USSC Non-Resident Fellow Dr Jooyeon Hong is author of this article published by the Korean Journal of International Relations.
Abstract
This article analyzes the Korea-China-Japan Trilateral Summits since 1999 not simply in terms of cooperative outcomes or levels of institutionalization, but as a strategic space in which political signals are exchanged and potential areas and agendas for cooperation are explored and coordinated despite persistent conflict and strategic distrust. Strategic space refers to a relational and institutional setting in which actors with divergent strategic purposes identify one another’s strategic positions and intentions and address sensitive political and security issues alongside cooperative agendas within a common diplomatic framework. Drawing on joint declarations, diplomatic documents, official statements, and national strategy documents, this article examines the formation and operation of the Korea-China-Japan Trilateral Summits as a strategic space, as well as the different ways in which Korea, China, and Japan have used this space. The analysis shows that this strategic space has weakened or been reactivated depending on the continuity of summit-level contacts and cooperative agendas. Korea has used it as a space for regional autonomy and middle-power diplomacy; China, as a space for neighborhood diplomacy and non-military regional cooperation; and Japan, as a diplomatic space for pursuing FOIP alongside engagement with East Asia. Originating in the institutionalization of East Asian regional cooperation, the Korea-China-Japan Trilateral Summits have seen their strategic meaning reconfigured within an Indo-Pacific order increasingly shaped by U.S.-China strategic competition and overlapping forms of security-oriented minilateral cooperation. They can thus be understood as a strategic space that sustains political contact and non-military cooperation even in the absence of strategic convergence.