Fallout: S. Korea as collateral damage in U.S.' struggle with China

Opinion

Fallout: S. Korea as collateral damage in U.S.’ struggle with China

THAAD and the South China Sea ruling shift Chinese attitudes, raising concerns in the South

Tim Beal September 13, 2016

Fallout: S. Korea as collateral damage in U.S.’ struggle with China

U.S. Embassy The Hague

Until recently it was the conventional wisdom to extol South Korea’s budding relationship with China and to consign North Korea’s to the dustbin of history. They might have been as close as lips and teeth in the past, the argument went, but North Korean intransigence was making the Chinese very annoyed. Jonathan D Pollack, writing on the blog of the Brookings Institution, a grande dame of the Washington foreign policy establishment, in an essay entitled China and North Korea: The long goodbye? confidently and authoritatively explained that:

China’s estrangement from North Korea continues to fester and deepen:

About the Author

Tim Beal

Tim Beal did a MA (Hons) in Modern Chinese Studies at Edinburgh University, followed by a PhD there on Chinese foreign trade. He moved to New Zealand in 1987 teaching at Victoria University of Wellington until his retirement in 2009. He has written extensively on International and Asian affairs, including two books relating to Korea: ‘North Korea: The Struggle against American Power’ (London: Pluto, 2005) and ‘Crisis in Korea: America, China, and the Risk of War’ (London: Pluto, 2011). He has been visiting both Koreas since the 1990s and maintains a geopolitical website focused on the peninsula at http://www.timbeal.net.nz/geopolitics/

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