Bilateral Challenges and Korean Anxieties

Abstract

This chapter examines the influence of wider bilateral and regional challenges on this dispute. It particularly notes the increasingly fraught nature of ties between the two neighbors since the early 2000s, when the optimism of the 1990s was replaced by more ‘realism and mixed feelings’. The rise in bilateral frictions over the feature has come in the midst of wider mutual anxieties about the strategic and economic objectives of the other side. China’s concerns are mainly security-based in relation to national defense and access to resources. Heightened Republic of Korea (ROK) unease regarding rightful jurisdiction over the feature occurred in a context of growing Chinese influence on the peninsula where South Koreans increasingly felt that a rising China was a threat to Korean sovereignty both north and south and its symbols, touching upon sensitivities concerning national identity and dignity. The chapter discusses the various broader challenges that both states have been attempting to address since the normalization of ties in 1992.