June 04, 2023
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

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: