Against China and North Korea: These new alliances are forming despite difficulties in Asia

New alliances in Asia: Japan and South Korea want to work more closely together, and NATO will probably open an office in Tokyo.

Nevertheless, there is sometimes a huge crunch between Seoul and Tokyo.

Munich/Seoul – Even a well-paid advertising agency could hardly have come up with more beautiful pictures.

Last Wednesday, US President Joe Biden invited his South Korean colleague Yoon Suk-yeol to a pompous state banquet at the White House.

The evening was a parade of American political and Hollywood celebrities, in which a good-humoured Yoon himself picked up the guitar and intoned the folk song "American Pie".

Earlier, both heads of state signed an agreement that Seoul's ambassador to Washington would later call a "new chapter" in relations between the two states.

When Japan's Prime Minister Fumio Kishida travels to Seoul this Sunday, he is likely to meet a rightly self-confident host.

Where: There were these other pictures, taken on Tuesday on an inhospitable rock in the middle of the sea that is called the "Japan Sea" in Tokyo and the "East Sea" in Seoul.

Jeon Yong-gi of South Korea's opposition Democratic Party had traveled with his associates to the Liancourt Rocks, a tiny rocky archipelago disputed between Japan and South Korea for decades.

"Welcome to Dokdo in Korea" is written on a banner that Jeon and his comrades-in-arms hold up to the camera.

Dokdo is South Korea's name for the rock, in Japan one speaks of the Takeshima Islands.

In fact, the islands are administered from Seoul, to the displeasure of the Tokyo government.

Their foreign ministry immediately protested the visit, declaring that the islets are an “inalienable part” of Japanese sovereignty.

Japan's colonial rule still causes resentment in South Korea

The island posse comes at a bad time for South Korea's president, because relations with neighboring Japan are actually better than they have been for a long time.

It was only at the beginning of March that Seoul made a move to remove one of the biggest obstacles in dealing with Tokyo: South Koreans who were victims of forced labor or abused as sex slaves during the Japanese occupation no longer have to leave Japan be compensated, but by South Korea itself. Money from private donations is to flow into a fund, which Tokyo and Washington expressly welcomed - but many people in South Korea reject outraged.

In their eyes, the Japanese colonial rule from 1910 to 1945 cannot be repaired so cheaply.

As recently as 2018, South Korea's highest court ordered Japan to pay compensation - a decision that Tokyo ignored and resulted in a trade dispute between the two countries.

As a result, no Japanese prime minister has visited South Korea since 2018.

The fact that Japan and South Korea are approaching each other again - Yoon was only in Japan in March - has a lot to do with the fact that as a state you can't choose your neighbors.

On the one hand, there is China, which is becoming more and more self-confident in the region.

State and party leader Xi Jinping makes no secret of the fact that he wants to "reunite" democratic Taiwan with the mainland, if necessary by force.

China and Taiwan: That's what the conflict is about

China and Taiwan: That's what the conflict is about

South Korea is concerned about Kim Jong-un's missile threats

Should the conflict escalate militarily, Japan and South Korea would probably also be directly affected: tens of thousands of US soldiers are stationed in both countries, which Washington might send to war, for example from Okinawa.

In any case, for Tokyo, Beijing's threatening gestures are "the greatest strategic challenge" of all time, as can be read in the new Japanese security strategy.

And there are also disputes with Beijing over some islands - the Senkaku or Diaoyu Islands, which lie between Japan and Taiwan.

In Seoul, people are also looking towards Taiwan with concern - but even more worried to the north, to the isolated realm of Kim Jong-un.

North Korea's dictator could order another nuclear test at any time, and for months he has had one missile after another fired into the sea for test purposes.

"North Korea's provocations will continue," said former CIA analyst Sue Mi Terry at a recent event hosted by the US think tank Center for Strategic and International Studies.

She expects further tests and an increasing modernization of the North Korean weapon arsenal.

China, which is probably the only country in the world that could exert a certain influence on Kim, lets the dictator do as he pleases.

"China has been of little help on the North Korean issue," Terry said.

The Washington government, on the other hand, takes South Korean concerns seriously.

On the occasion of Yoon's state visit last week, both sides signed a declaration intended to strengthen Seoul's deterrence capabilities - among other things, a US nuclear submarine will soon be stationed in South Korea.

This arouses desires in Tokyo, after all, North Korean missiles keep landing dangerously close to the Japanese islands.

Japan wants to work more closely with NATO

The attempts of the Japanese and the South Koreans to keep the Kim regime and the government in Beijing at a distance both states want to embed in a larger context.

In May, Yoon Suk-yeol is expected to be a guest at the G7 meeting in Hiroshima, Japan.

In April, their foreign ministers threatened North Korea with a “quick, united and robust international response” if the Kim regime were to test further missiles.

Secretly, people in Seoul are hoping to eventually become the eighth member of the group of states.

First, however, they want to work more closely with the Quad Group, a security dialogue between the governments of Japan, India, Australia and the USA.

According to a media report, Japan in turn wants to cooperate more closely with NATO, which will open a liaison office in the country for this purpose.

Of course, Pyongyang and Beijing don't like these new alliances at all.

In North Korea, the Kim regime recently organized protests that burned pictures of "senile war monster" Joe Biden and "his top-class puppet traitor" Yoon Suk-yeol, state news agency KCNA rumbled.

In Beijing, the choice of words was more diplomatic, but no less definite.

"The US has created tensions by exploiting problems on the Korean Peninsula," a State Department spokeswoman said.

"The behavior of the United States is the result of its Cold War mentality." However, the spokeswoman left completely unmentioned that it is North Korea that has been aiming missiles at its neighbors for months.