편집자 주     본지에서는 전세계 외국인 독자들을 대상으로 한국의 역사와 문화를 정확하게 소개하기 위해 김정기 변호사의 칼럼을 영문판으로 연재를 시작합니다.

한국의 역사와 문화에 관심있는 전 세계인들에게 도움이 되길 바랍니다.

한국어 독자들은 한국어로 번역된 화면이 보이므로 반드시 사이트 상단에서 원문보기로 설정하셔야 영문판으로 보실수 있습니다.

 

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☆김정기 총장 주요 약력☆
 
● 학력
- 뉴욕주립대학교(StonyBrook) 정치학과 수석졸업
- 마케트대학교(Marquette) 로스쿨 법학박사
- 하버드대학교(Harvard) 케네디스쿨 최고위과정
- 베이징대학교(Peking) 북한학 연구학자

 

● 경력
- 제8대 주상하이 대한민국 총영사(13등급 대사)
- 2010 상하이엑스포 대한민국관 정부대표
- 아시아태평양지방정부네트워크(CityNet) 사무국 대표
- 세계스마트시티기구(WeGO) 사무국 사무총장
- 밀워키지방법원 재판연구원 
- 법무법인 대륙아주 중국 총괄 미국변호사
- 난징대학교 국제경제연구소 객좌교수
- 베이징대학교 동방학연구원 연구교수
- 국민대학교 정치대학원 특임교수
- 동국대학교 경영전문대학원 석좌교수
- 숭실사이버대학교 초대 총장

 

● 저서
- 대학생을 위한 거로영어연구[전10권](거로출판사)
- 나는 1%의 가능성에 도전한다(조선일보사)
- 한국형 협상의 법칙(청년정신사)
- 대한민국과 세계 이야기(도서출판 책미듬)

(Newskorea=Seoul) Digital News Team = Korea Story 17 - <Foreign Affairs and National Security 9  by Atty Jeong-kee Kim>

● China-Russia Military Alliance Threatens East Asian Security.

Historically, China and Russia have maintained a relationship marked by both affection and animosity. Despite the end of the Cold War, the world remains divided between democratic and communist blocs. The democratic bloc, led by the United States and the West, seeks to contain the communist bloc shared by China and Russia in both the Pacific and Europe. Consequently, China and Russia, in a shared predicament, view the U.S. and the West as common adversaries and have maintained close military cooperation. However, the two nations are unlikely to formalize their relationship into a military alliance due to their potential rivalry in the struggle for hegemony. Thus, the China-Russia relationship remains unpredictable and subject to change. This unpredictability is partly due to the significant economic interdependence between the U.S. and China, the U.S. and Russia, the EU and China, and the EU and Russia. For instance, China and Russia are the largest producers of titanium used in aircraft manufacturing, a material the U.S. has imported since the Soviet era. China imports the most semiconductors from the U.S., while the EU’s largest export market is China and its largest energy importer is Russia.

In recent times, China and Russia have demonstrated their military alliance by encroaching on South Korea’s Air Defense Identification Zone (KADIZ) and the airspace over the Liancourt Rocks (Dokdo) under the guise of joint air exercises. This display of strength aims to challenge the U.S.-South Korea joint military exercises and create fissures within the U.S.-South Korea-Japan trilateral security cooperation framework. During the Eastern Economic Forum held in Vladivostok, Russia, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping showcased their close economic relationship to the world. The Wall Street Journal highlighted this with the title “China and Russia Draw Closer,” predicting a new Cold War era in East Asia, with China and Russia on one side against the U.S. and Japan on the other.

In 1689, China and Russia drew a border along the Amur River through the Treaty of Nerchinsk during the reign of Peter the Great of Russia and Emperor Kangxi of the Qing Dynasty. Nothing special happened after that. In 1856, although Russia played a passive role as a sort of intermediary in the Second Opium War, which was led by Britain and France, it managed to secure Northern Manchuria (Maritime Province), a region sacred to the Qing Dynasty, from China. This marked Russia's rise as a key power in East Asia. In 1895, as the Sino-Japanese War ended with Japan's victory, Japan gained control over the Southern Manchuria region according to the Treaty of Shimonoseki. In 1897, Russia brought in Germany and France and carried out the so-called Triple Intervention in order to keep Japan in check. As a result, Japan was forced to give up its interests in Manchuria, and Russia secured Southern Manchuria and established floating port of Dalian. Today, if you go to Harbin in Heilongjiang Province or Dalian in Liaoning Province, you can easily find many buildings in the city with a Russian feel. However, in 1905, Russia handed over its rights to Manchuria to Japan, which won the Russo-Japanese War, and left the stage.

After the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917, Russia became the Soviet Union and established the Comintern International to spread communism worldwide, which supported the founding of the Chinese Communist Party in 1921. Subsequently, Sun Yat-sen of the Kuomintang, disappointed by the U.S. and Japan’s inaction, accepted Soviet support and entered into the First United Front between 1923 and 1927, completing the Northern Expedition and achieving unification under Kuomintang leadership. The establishment of Hwangpo Military Academy with Soviet support was symbolic, with Chiang Kai-shek as the principal and Zhou En-lai as the deputy principal. During the Second United Front from 1937 to 1945, the Kuomintang and the Communist Party joined forces against their common enemy, Japan. After World War II, the Chinese Civil War broke out. The Kuomintang was supported by the U.S., while the Communist Party received support from the Soviet Union. Ultimately, Mao Zedong defeated Chiang Kai-shek, and led to the establishment of the People’s Republic of China on the mainland in 1949.

Sino-Soviet relations before and after the founding of the country in 1949 were truly honeymoon. It is an undeniable fact that the Soviet Communist Party played a decisive role in the founding of the People's Republic of China, led by the Chinese Communist Party. As a brother nation with Marxism-Leninism as its common ideology, the Soviet Union, which had already completed industrialization during the Stalin era and was militarily the world's strongest, helped China stand on its own by supporting the new nation with the capital and technology it needed. Then, with Stalin's death in 1955, things began to fall apart. When Khrushchev, who became the new number one figure in the Soviet Union, adopted a revisionist line while campaigning to downgrade Stalin, Mao Zedong became incensed, and as a result, Sino-Soviet relations cooled rapidly, which ultimately led to an armed conflict in the Sino-Soviet border area in 1969. This happened and brought them to the brink of war. Afterwards, Sino-Soviet relations were at their worst, but in 1985, when Gorbachev became General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, he adopted Perestroika, which means reform, and normalized relations with China. A dramatic moment came with Gorbachev's visit to Beijing in 1989. However, due to the Tiananmen Square incident, triggered by protests demanding democratization, China was cut off from the outside world until Deng Xiaoping declared in 1991 to resume reform and opening up through his Southern Tour Lectures. The Soviet Union also lost the arms race with the United States in 1991. The empire disintegrated and remained as Russia. 

In 1991, the world entered an era of peace without conflict as the Cold War between the Soviet Union and the Soviet Union came to an end and the United States established a unilateral monopoly system. China and Russia, who naturally share the same ideology, have continued to cooperate through the Shanghai Cooperation Organization and BRICs since 1991, in addition to close cooperation between the two countries. In the 2000s, China and Russia confirmed the Manchurian-Siberian border, eliminating obstacles to bilateral relations that could arise in the event of an emergency. Military cooperation has also become closer since 2005, and China-Russia joint military exercises are being conducted every year in the name of the 'peace mission', with large-scale participation of the three services: the Army, Navy, and Air Force. This was not implemented even when Sino-Soviet relations were very good in the early post-war Cold War period, which gives us an idea of ​​the extent of military cooperation between the two countries.

Due to the Ukraine crisis that occurred in 2014, Russia suffered an oil crisis due to UN economic sanctions. Afterwards, the country faced its worst economic crisis, and at this time, China provided emergency funds to Russia, a traditional ally, and helped the country barely overcome the crisis by concluding a currency swap agreement. Additionally, in 2015, the two countries agreed to further strengthen their strategic cooperative relationship through a summit meeting.

Since 2019, Xi Jinping and Putin have moved as one, and the China-Russia military and security community is looming threatening in the East Asian region. Although there is a traditional triangular security cooperation between Korea, the United States and Japan, the growing military imbalance between the two major camps is becoming a huge factor in military security instability.

What is Korea’s stance?  The situation is not easy after Russia invades Ukraine in 2022. Korea's active participation in the U.S. Indo-Pacific strategy has strengthened its relationship with the U.S., but has led to conflict with China and Russia. Immediately after the inauguration of the Yoon Seok-yeol administration, President Biden made a surprise visit to Korea and the ROK-US summit was held.  Korea announced the 'Indo-Pacific Strategy of Freedom, Peace, and Prosperity' in December 2022, and presented a solution to the forced mobilization issue called 'third party reimbursement' in March 2023. In March of the same year, President Yoon Seok-yeol visited Japan and held a Korea-Japan summit, and marked the beginning of a new Korea-Japan relationship. This was followed by President Yoon Seok-yeol's state visit to the United States in April and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida's return visit to Seoul in May. As a result, Korea's relations with China and Russia became more difficult. While it is appropriate for Korea to condemn Russia's illegal invasion, its indirect involvement in supplying lethal weapons to Ukraine at the request of the United States is viewed as a hostile act akin to intervention in a war. This has worsened relations between Korea and Russia. This is because the U.S.'s inventory of 155mm artillery shells was depleted due to its support to Ukraine, and Korea began supplying shells by lending them to the United States. Relations with China also worsened as the Yoon Seok-yeol government criticized the Moon Jae-in government for 'pro-China diplomacy' and lined up with the United States in the U.S.-China hegemony competition. Military tensions are also increasing as the Washington Declaration announced at the recent ROK-US summit mentioned a port call in Korea by an Ohio-class nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarine (SSBN) equipped with Trident 2 D5 nuclear missiles under the pretext of strengthening extended deterrence. 

There is serious concern that, following Taiwan, the Korean Peninsula may become another flashpoint in East Asia.

☆ Author:  Atty Jeong-kee Kim ☆

● Education
- Bachelor of Arts in Political Science, Summa Cum Laude, State University of New York at Stony Brook
-  Doctor of Jurisprudence, Marquette University Law School
- Senior Executive Program, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University
- Research Scholar in North Korean Studies, Peking University

● Experience
- Consul General of the Republic of Korea in Shanghai
- Commissioner General for the Korean Pavilion at the 2010 Shanghai Expo
- CEO, Asia-Pacific Local Government Network for Economic and Social Development (CityNet)
- Secretary General, World Smart Sustainable Cities Organization(WeGO)
- Law Clerk, Milwaukee Circuit Court, USA
- Senior Attorney-at-Law, Dr & Aju LLC
- Distinguished Visiting Professor, World Economy Research Institute, Nanjing University
- Research Professor, Institute of Oriental Studies, Peking University
- Distinguished Professor, Graduate School of Political Science, Kookmin University
- Chair Professor, Graduate School of Business, Dongguk University
- First President of Soongsil Cyber University

● Publications
- Georo English Studies Series for College Students [10 volumes] (Georo Publishing)
- I Challenge the Possibility of One Percent (Chosun Ilbo)
- The Art of Negotiation (Cheongnyonneongsin Publishing)
- Korea and the World (Chekmidum Publishing)