Commentary: China's Yellow Sea moves put South Korea's new president in a tight spot

CNA

3 days ago

BUSAN: Since 2018, China has installed several marine structures in overlapping South Korean-Chinese waters in the Yellow Sea. There are now three of them, which Beijing refers to as 'deep-sea fishery aquaculture facilities'.
This has been a point of contention between the two governments, but the issue has risen in South Korean public awareness after Chinese coast guard ships and civilian boats forced away a South Korean research vessel sent to investigate these structures in February. This led to a two-hour standoff, during which the South Korean coast guard was also deployed.
China has rejected requests from South Korea to relocate the structures outside of the shared area and in May unilaterally declared 'no-sail zones' within the area, according to a report by Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative.
The situation creates a tough dilemma for South Korea, especially its new progressive president, Lee Jae-myung.
Unlike his conservative predecessor, Mr Lee wants to pivot away from a United States-aligned hawkishness on China and pursue a more transactional relationship which does not tie South Korea into a camp in the emerging Sino-US cold war.
But that would almost certainly require appeasement of China – such as tolerating these Yellow Sea encroachments.
PARALLELS WITH SOUTH CHINA SEA
China's moves in the Yellow Sea parallel its behaviour in the South China Sea.
There, for decades, China has steadily encroached on the maritime claims of the littoral states, most particularly Vietnam and the Philippines. China has justified these expansions via an ostensibly historical claim to the South China Sea – the nine-dash line.
Such claims are highly contestable, of course. Almost every nation can put forward historically based claims to adjacent but disputed territory. Indeed, the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) was promulgated precisely to adjudicate these sorts of irreconcilable assertions. And an UNCLOS arbitration panel ruled unanimously against the nine-dash line in 2016.
China has ignored that ruling and continued to assert its position by reclaiming land, building artificial islands, and ramping up its air and naval facilities and patrols.
To avoid the open perception of military expansion however, Chinese civilian fleets – fishing boats and the coast guard – have led this territorial creep. The military only shows up later, after other claimants have effectively given up trying to stop the Chinese takeover. Strategic theory calls this 'grey zone tactics' - craftily changing facts on the ground (and water) without the explicit use of force.
China's opponents then struggle to find an appropriate response. For example, the US is a security partner to both the Philippines and Vietnam, but America is unlikely to risk war with China over low stakes like coast guard vessels circling sand bars.
GREY ZONE TACTICS IN THE YELLOW SEA
China's steady gains in the South China Sea have likely encouraged it to try the same strategy in the East China Sea and the Yellow Sea. Pushing into the East China Sea has been hard. Japan has the resources and naval capabilities, which the Philippines and Vietnam lack, to push back on Chinese maritime expansion.
But the Yellow Sea is a better domain for China. Its North Korean ally is one the relevant littoral states, and it will do nothing to deter China.
South Korea, the other relevant party, has a capable but small navy. Most of South Korean defence spending goes into land power.
Although South Korea has a long coast, the North Koreans have built such a massive army – 1.5 million men – and stationed it so close to South Korea's capital, that South Korea spends disproportionately on its army and air force to outgun the North Korean threat. The South, for example, recently considered building an aircraft carrier to challenge China's maritime expansion, but the national legislature rejected it as too expensive.
At present, South Korea mostly relies on US naval power for maritime security. This arrangement has been feasible in the past, but the Chinese navy is expanding rapidly. The US is unlikely to risk war with China over indeterminate structures in the East China Sea - just as it has been reticent to help the Philippines directly over low stakes like shoals and coral reefs.
TRICKY FOR SOUTH KOREA'S NEW PRESIDENT
All this puts South Korea's president in a tight spot. South Korean progressives have a long foreign policy tradition of anti-Americanism and downplaying North Korean totalitarianism to facilitate detente.
More broadly, this has led to equivocation on Russia and China, and a reticence to admit that China, Russia and North Korea cooperate. Mr Lee, for example, has blamed Ukraine for its invasion by Russian and said South Korea should not help Taiwan if China attacks it.
This nationalist-minded foreign policy is attractive for the independence it promises from American 'domination'. But it also means that South Korea must stand on its own if North Korea, China and Russia bully it.
The South Korean public opinion senses this. The public strongly supports the US alliance and has become increasingly anti-Chinese. According to a survey by JoongAng Ilbo and the East Asia Institute in June, 66.3 per cent of respondents said they held an unfavourable view of China. This is up from 63.8 per cent in a similar survey last August.
If Mr Lee is seen as folding before Chinese pressure in the Yellow Sea, the public backlash will be sharp.
On the other hand, if Mr Lee falls back on alignment with the US to push back China, the price will be greater South Korean cooperation on Taiwan, the East and South China Seas, Ukraine, and so on.
This choice was easy for Mr Lee's conservative predecessor. For Mr Lee, it is likely to lead to a sharp foreign policy fight inside his left-progressive coalition.