Since the mid-19th century, South Korea, China, and Japan have overcome challenges that threatened their national survival in unique ways and grown into nations that have garnered international attention. As of 2021, these three countries are among the wealthiest and most powerful in the world. In terms of economic strength, the most important indicator of national power, South Korea, China, and Japan ranked 10th, 2nd, and 3rd in the world last year in gross domestic product (GDP) compiled by the International Monetary Fund (IMF). In terms of military strength, South Korea, China, and Japan ranked 6th, 3rd, and 5th, respectively, in the Global Firepower (GFP) World Military Power Index. Despite being the smallest in terms of area and population, South Korea boasts national power on a G7 level.
The American current affairs magazine US News & World Report ranked South Korea's national power eighth this year, higher than G7 nations Italy and Canada. South Korea has reached world-class levels of hard power, such as economic and military might, as well as soft power, symbolized by the Korean Wave. The influence of East Asia, which includes Japan, China, and South Korea, is expected to surpass that of North America, which includes the US and Canada, and Europe, which includes Russia, Germany, and France.
Located on the eastern edge of the Eurasian continent, Japan, China, and Korea have interacted politically, economically, socially, and culturally since ancient times. They have lived side by side as close neighbors for thousands of years. While the three countries are made up of different ethnic groups and speak different languages, they appear similar in appearance and share some similarities in food and traditional clothing. For example, Japan, China, and Korea have adopted Chinese characters that originated in the middle reaches of the Yellow River and developed them to suit their respective linguistic environments, fostering diversity within their commonalities. While they have experienced periods of conflict, such as war, the period of peaceful exchange and trade has been overwhelmingly long.
China is the country that has maintained leadership in East Asia for the longest time. Its land area and population size exceed those of the Korean Peninsula and the Japanese archipelago. Even before the modern era, China's culture and scientific and technological standards were superior to those of Korea and Japan. Pre-modern Korea and Japan adopted many cultural artifacts, technologies, and systems from China. The China-dominated trilateral relationship reversed in the modern era. Japan succeeded in modernizing through the Meiji Restoration, but Korea closed its doors, refused contact with the outside world, and headed for ruin. After liberation in 1945, Korea experienced division and war, and fell into what was once one of the poorest countries in the world.
China has also experienced ups and downs amid the waves of modernization. Its defeat in the Opium War of 1840 thwarted its attempts at modernization, ceding leadership in East Asia to Japan. Japan, victorious in wars against China in 1895 and Russia in 1905, successfully seized leadership in East Asia, eventually occupying the Korean Peninsula and parts of China. In modern times, the three East Asian countries have developed rapidly. South Korea, thanks to rapid economic growth beginning in the 1960s, has developed into a G7-level nation economically, militarily, and culturally. After Japan's defeat in World War II, it recovered following the Korean War in 1950 and enjoyed the status of the world's second-largest economy by 2009. China, which has risen rapidly since the 1990s, is expected to overtake Japan's economic power by 2010 and once again take leadership in East Asia.
Since the 1990s, when the Chinese economy began to develop rapidly, trade, investment, and people-to-people exchanges between Korea, China, and Japan have grown faster than any other region in the world. Exchanges between future generations, including international students, have also increased dramatically. As a result, exchanges between the three countries were extremely active before the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2019, trade between Korea and China, Korea and Japan, reached US$240 billion (approximately 287.664 trillion won), US$76 billion (approximately 91.936 trillion won), and US$310 billion (approximately 371.566 trillion won), respectively. The number of flights between Korea and China, Korea and Japan, and Japan and China, respectively, reached 140,000, 110,000, and 150,000, respectively, and people-to-people exchanges reached 9 million, 7.6 million, and 11 million, respectively (as of 2018). Even amid the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, East Asia remains the world's most trade-rich region.
Compared to the frequency of people-to-people and material exchanges, the political ties between Japan, China, and South Korea are relatively low. To overcome this, the leaders of the three countries established the Trilateral Cooperation Secretariat (TCS) in September 2011 to solidify peace and common prosperity in East Asia. This was an effort to institutionalize cooperation beyond the trilateral summits held periodically by Japan, China, and South Korea. The TCS is an international organization dedicated to bringing lasting peace and realizing the vision of common prosperity among the three countries, which have long endured painful experiences of conflict and war with countries both within and outside the region.
Since the establishment of the TCS, political, economic, and social/cultural exchanges between Japan, China, and Korea have become more active. However, rising nationalism in all three countries has recently led to various manifestations of mutual hostility. The TCS has been working hard to resolve these issues. One of the representative projects currently being envisioned by the TCS is the Northeast Asia Ring Railway & Expressway Initiative, which would connect Korea, Japan, and China through an undersea tunnel across the Strait of Korea (Tsushima Strait) and the Yellow Sea. If this initiative becomes a reality, citizens of Japan, China, and Korea would be able to travel by car or high-speed train through the Japan-Korea and Korea-China undersea tunnels to Seoul and Gyeongju in North Gyeongsang Province, Tokyo and Kyoto in Japan, and Beijing and Xi'an in China within 12 hours. We hope that this will promote political, economic, social, and cultural exchanges among the three countries and further deepen mutual understanding and affinity among the peoples of each country.
I hope that the TCS, the Japan-China-Korea Cooperation Secretariat, will play a role similar to that of the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) Secretariat, which contributed to the common prosperity of Western Europe.
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