"CEAC Commentary" introduces news analyses andopinions in Japan on the concept of an East AsianCommunity, but they do not represent the views ofCEAC as an institution.

June 17, 2010

New Development of the Japan-China-ROK
Summit as Dispute Settlement Mechanism
By ISHIGAKI Yasuji
As result of the recent double resignations of Prime Minister Hatoyama and Democratic
Party Secretary General Ozawa, the Japanese Government has been again faced with a reset,
causing some inevitable confusion. There is at present a mixture of hope and anxiety entertainedby many, for there is no knowing yet whether the new administration’s foreign policy would be
one to meet the expectation of the people and to restore trust from other countries. In themeantime, in East Asia the international expert team’s investigation revealed that the recent
incident of the sinking of the Korean warship was most possibly caused by the torpedo fired by a
North Korean submarine. North Korea strongly refuted the results of the investigation andreacted with a war footing stance, and thus, the Korean peninsula has suddenly become strained
to the breaking point. It seems that the scenario of resuming the Six Party Talks, which was aheated topic just before, had been blown away afar.
The world’s attention has now been shifted towards the discussions in the UN Security
Council: whether it would be able to denounce North Korea’s action in the name of international
community and to take appropriate measures to prevent effectively the recurrence of similar
incidents. Amid these events, it was particularly noted that the Japan-China-ROK Trilateral
Summit was held in Jeju Island in Korea and dealt with this question as a de facto central issue.
As well- known, the Japan-China-ROK Summit had traditionally been held very briefly at themargin of the ASEAN+3 Summit or the East Asian Summit (EAS), and it has only very recently
become an annual event to be held independently of the ASEAN-related meetings, ever since theTrilateral Summit was convened in Fukuoka, Japan, during the Aso Administration, in December,2008. Therefore, it had been decided beforehand that the recent Third Japan-China-ROK
Trilateral Summit was to be held on May 29 th and 30th, and was preceded by the meeting of theForeign Ministers of three nations on May 15 th in Jeju Island.
As the investigation report on the sinking of the Korean warship was released on Mayth20 , it was quite natural that this incident became a central hot issue at the Japan-China-ROK
Trilateral Summit and serious exchange of views and discussion took place at the meeting uponthis topic. Korea asserted the need for this issue to be discussed in the Security Council in orderto take appropriate measures and Japan strongly supported the Korean position and requested
China’s cooperation, whereas China advocated the necessity of careful and calm approach to thi sissue to avoid an armed clash. The significance of having had such discussions at this meeting at
a regional level is undeniable and great. Having a talk among Japan, China, and Korea, major
powers concerned in the East Asian region before this incident was officially tabled for1

discussions in the Security Council would have no doubt been useful and benefitted the United
Nations for taking most appropriate treatment of this matter.
It was, however, just a sheer coincidence that a high level meeting of Japan-China-Korea
to discuss such a thorny issue was actually held in such a timely manner, because that meeting
was predetermined to take place at the abovementioned date and location by chance.
Nevertheless, it was very significant that the said meeting produced a basic agreement of thethree countries to institutionalize the Japan-China-Korea Trilateral Summit by way of
establishing a permanent organization, the “Trilateral Cooperation Secretariat” in Korea in 2011.
In the future, if this new institution could further enable the three countries not only to have anannual meeting, but also to convene at a request of one member state emergency trilateral talkswhenever the need arises to discuss any disputed issue, and if such cases and experiences would
be built up, it may develop into a political mechanism of the “East Asian Community”, whichmight well be termed as an epoch-making progress in the region.
(This is the English translation of an article written as personal view by Mr. ISHIGAKIYasuji, Delegate for Japan to AALCO and Former Professor of Tokai University, which
originally appeared on the BBS “Hyakka-Somei” of CEAC on June 6, 2010.)

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