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The First Tech War? Why the Korea-Japan Tensions are about US-China Competition on AI

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by Yeseul Woo

Stand-off? South Korea’s Moon Jae-in and Japan’s Shinzo Abe (Image credit: Kim Kyung-hoon EPA-EFE)

The deteriorating relations between the United States, South Korea, and Japan have shaken the security system in Northeast Asia, which hinges on the alliances between the three countries. Observers typically attribute the slump in the relationship between South Korea and Japan to the latter’s removal of South Korea’s favoured “whitelisted” trade partner status, the imposition of export controls on its electronics sector, and South Korea’s August 2019 announcement that Seoul did not wish to renew the General Security of Military Information Agreement (GSOMIA). This is a naïve observation, missing the critical dynamic that is inextricably linked to the South Korea-Japan row-that is, great-power competition in artificial intelligence technology (AI) between the United States and China.

On 30 October and 29 November 2018, South Korea’s Supreme Court ordered Nippon Steel & Sumimoto Metal, and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries respectively to compensate South Koreans forced to work in their factories during the Japanese occupation period. The court ruled, that if the Japanese companies refused to oblige, the victims of forced labour could seek local court orders to seize their Korea-based assets.

Over the course of July 2019, then, Japan imposed export controls on three core materials required by South Korean tech companies to manufacture dynamic random-access semiconductors (DRAMS)—an essential part for 5G networks and AI. The export curbs require Japanese firms to seek licenses to export these materials to South Korea. Because Japan is the main producer of the core materials, the new export procedures disrupted supply chains and in so doing South Korea’s ability to manufacture DRAMS. On 2 August 2019, Japan removed South Korea from its whitelist of favoured trade partners, thereby prolonging and formalising the export curbs on these materials.

Although Japan claimed that the export regulations were designed to streamline export procedures in light of national security concerns, observers believed the new measures came in response to the South Korean Supreme Court rulings on South Korean forced labour in Japanese companies during the occupation period and due to the on-going disagreements between Japan and South Korean on the compensation of comfort women. South Korea’s response came later in August 2019. Seoul announced its intention to terminate GSOMIA, reasoning that Japan’s export restrictions had caused a ‘grave’ change in security cooperation. Although South Korea and Japan have since agreed not to let GSOMIA lapse, the issue of whitelist exclusion has not been resolved. The trade row between the two countries is set to worsen when South Korea will act on its Supreme Court rulings by beginning to seize the Korea-based assets of Japanese companies.

But Japan’s export controls resemble the US-China trade war. Semiconductors are vital components of AI and 5G technology, which are used in surveillance technology and missile defence. They are imperative for national security as for instance, AI is used to predict missile flight paths. The crucial link is this: two Korean companies, Samsung and SK Hynix, are the world’s largest and second-largest manufactures of DRAMS respectively, accounting for 72.7% of the global DRAMS market in the fourth quarter of 2019. But South Korean companies also account for a large proportion of Huawei’s DRAMS supply, China’s main producer of 5G and AI technology. Samsung’s recent launch of the Data and Information (DIT) Center, an effort to produce AI semiconductors, suggests that the company has outpaced its competitors.

South Korea’s DRAMS exports to Huawei might be a national security concern for the United States and Japan. By disrupting South Korea’s supply of the materials needed to manufacture DRAMS, Japan might potentially slow down China’s AI progress. Japan’s export restrictions undoubtedly align with US intentions. The Wall Street Journal reported on 17 February 2020 that the US Department of Commerce plans to restrict Chinese access to chip technology by seeking legislation to ‘require chip factories world-wide to get licenses if they plan to produce chips for Huawei.’ Furthermore, the US Department of Commerce plans on tightening export controls on chips to Huawei; license-free sales are only to be permitted where chips are less than ten per cent American-made. The threshold stands at twenty-five per cent at the time of writing. The United States has also pressured allies like Canada and European countries to contain Chinese semiconductor technology, causing a row between President Trump and Prime Minister Johnson after the UK allowed Huawei a limited role in the development of Britain’s 5G network.

In another twist, however, Japan’s decision to limit South Korea’s access to materials needed for its DRAMS production backfired. The export restrictions were a protectionist move - Japan was arguably hoping that its own companies would thrive once again to become the market leaders, which they were until Samsung and SK Hynix gained a competitive edge. But DuPont, a US chemical materials company, subsequently decided to establish a US$ 28-million production facility for extreme ultraviolet rays in Korea, which will ensure Korea’s supply of the key materials needed for the production of semiconductors. Therefore, if Japan is serious about its ambition to gain market share in the semiconductors industry, it should carefully consider its next steps.

In other words, what we may be witnessing with the row between South Korea and Japan is not so much a dispute over compensation of South Korean forced wartime labourers or comfort women during the Japanese occupation period but the onset of the world’s first tech war: competition between the United States and China over supremacy in AI. South Korea has long aligned with the United States in geostrategic terms, but China’s overtaking of the United States as South Korea’s most important trade partner has placed Seoul in an awkward position as the imposition of Japanese export controls—designed to hit one of South Korea’s major industries—has demonstrated.


Yeseul Woo is a PhD candidate at the Department of War Studies at King’s College London and a Developing Scholar at the Hudson Institute, Washington, D.C. She has previously served as a journalist for South Korean and U.S. media outlets and as a fellow at the East West Center, at the Pacific Forum and at the Harry S. Truman Institute

South Korea’s Dangerous Silence on Human Rights Abuses in North Korea

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by Yeseul Woo

Kim Jong-un and Moon Jae-in shake hands at the Panmunjom Peace Village in 2018 (Image credit: AFP)

On 3 January 2020, the first North Korean defector reality show “Go to End” began to air on the South Korean television channel Chosun TV. The series follows the journey of a 12-year-old North Korean boy who is defecting to South Korea to meet his parents, who had already defected across the border six years earlier. The documentary provides twenty-two hours of live coverage of the twelve-year-old’s risky journey from North Korea into China, and from there on to Southeast Asian countries. Dangerous escape scenes are captured vividly. It is the first time that the South Korean media televised a depiction of a defection method. South Korean TV stations have of course shown programmes about defectors from time to time, but they had hitherto been mainly talk shows on which defectors shared stories about their defection and their new lives in the capitalist South.

Currently there are over 40,000 North Korean defectors living in South Korea. In addition, in the United States, 219 North Koreans have settled as refugees since the North Korean Human Rights Act was enacted in 2004, which aims to help defectors fleeing the regime by making them eligible for political asylum in the United States. Southeast Asia, especially Thailand, along with countries south of the Chinese border also hosts a considerable number of defectors. When defectors flee North Korea, families get separated. Those left behind will face interrogation by state security officials and, more likely, imprisonment in labour camps or execution. Those defected will need to live a new life in an alien society without their loved ones.

The Korean Peninsula faces a major security challenge – that of a nuclear-armed North Korea. The denuclearisation negotiations between the North and the United States have lost momentum at the time of writing, and it is unclear how quickly talks can resume given impending presidential elections in South Korea and the United States. Human rights issues are often neglected or forgotten in the face of urgent security challenges.

One such example is President Trump’s disinterest in discussing human rights in North Korea in the framework of the United Nations. In December last year, the United States blocked a United Nations Security Council discussion on human rights abuses in North Korea. The Moon Jae-in administration has been complicit, preferring to remain silent on human rights issues so as to not upset relations with Pyongyang.

However, why should we shy away from discussing human rights within the security framework? We need to change the narrative that human rights issues pose as obstacles to security negotiations with North Korea. For example, the Moon Jae-in administration fears that openly addressing North Korea’s human right abuses would impede progress in the denuclearisation negotiations. That is a mistake.

We need to stop framing the human rights discussion as a de-coupled, secondary moral issue. Instead, we should tie human rights to the security narrative. What does genuine peace on the Korean Peninsula mean? Surely it should not merely refer to state survival in an anarchical international system? Rather, genuine peace in the Korean Peninsula could only be achieved if all its citizens, in North and South, are safe from human rights abuses. Only then can our societies prosper and find peace internally but also externally. However, the reality is far from it. According to the North Korean Human Rights Investigation Committee (COI), North Korea’s human rights violations are so ubiquitous that there is no point in measuring them anymore. According to the 2019 World Freedom Report, the current situation of human rights in North Korea over the past 47 years ranks as the worst across the world.

Last December, ten public figures from twenty-two nations and 67 NGOs from around the world sent a letter to President Moon Jae-in urging him not to ignore human rights abuses in North Korea. Signatories included international human rights organisations like the International Federation for Human Rights, Amnesty International, and Human Rights Watch; and individuals such as Thomas Quintana, the UN Special Rapporteur on North Korean Human Rights. The letter unequivocally states that US and South Korean silence on human rights abuses has further encouraged the repression of human rights by the North Korean regime and is inconducive to ongoing efforts to conclude a genuine peace settlement. In the letter, the signatories criticise the Moon Jae-in administration’s refusal to co-sponsor a United Nations General Assembly Resolution on the human rights situation in North Korea on 14th November 2019. Since 2005, similar resolutions on human rights issues pertaining to North Korea were adopted by the UN General Assembly; South Korea had co-sponsored these resolutions for 11 years before Moon Jae-in’s refusal to support similar efforts in 2019.

The Moon Jae-in government prefers to postpone discussing human rights in North Korea until the North Korean nuclear issue is resolved, setting out five visions and national goals for peace and prosperity on the Korean Peninsula. The government made 100 pledges to this effect. Although one of them is to improve human rights in North Korea and resolve humanitarian issues such as separated families, it is a pity that Moon Jae-in now prefers to be silent on the human rights situation in North Korea. This silence is indeed dangerous as it will not signal respect to North Korea, but it will inevitably be seen by those in Pyongyang as South Korean and US weakness. If we cannot even defend our values against North Korea, how can we ensure the security of our free societies?

Yeseul Woo is a PhD candidate at the Department of War Studies at King’s College London and a Developing Scholar at the Hudson Institute, Washington, D.C. She has previously served as a journalist for South Korean and U.S. media outlets and as a fellow at the East West Center, at the Pacific Forum and at the Harry S. Truman Institute.

Kim Jong-un’s Winter Charm Offensive: Another Attempt of Duping Seoul

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By Davis Florick

 

The statues of Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il in Mansu Hill, Pyongyang (Credit Image: J.A. de Roo - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, Wikimedia Commons)

While North Korea’s participation in the 2018 Winter Olympics and its recent government-to-government meeting with South Korean officials are both positive developments, no one should forget that Pyongyang has a long history of attempting to manipulate Seoul. On three occasions, the Kim regime pursued extensive engagement with South Korea. North Korea’s motivations for engagement meet one or more of three criteria: It feels threatened by outside events, it is in serious need of aid, or it perceives an opportunity to create tension between South Korea and the United States (US). Kim Jong-un’s efforts in the lead up to, during, and after the 2018 Olympics meet two of these three criteria. North Korea’s need for aid and sanctions relief as well as the perception that tension exists between South Korean President Moon Jae-in and US President Donald Trump explain Pyongyang’s willingness to cooperate with Seoul.

North Korea’s engagement attempts with South Korea have been motivated by extreme circumstances. First, President Nixon’s trip to China in 1972 was a dramatic moment for the Korean Peninsula. North Korea became concerned that Chinese policy shifts might cost Pyongyang a major patron. Kim Il-sung also believed the US might be retreating from East Asia, possibly leaving South Korea vulnerable. Second, the collapse of the Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact as well as increasing international recognition of South Korea left North Korea exceedingly vulnerable. In response, Kim Il-sung agreed to the 1992 Joint Declaration of the Denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, thus removing US nuclear weapons from the Peninsula and dramatically reducing the perceived threat from South Korea and its allies. Third, Kim Jong-il mainpulated Kim Dae-jung and Roh Moo-hyun’s (1998-2008) Sunshine Policy to acquire needed foreign currency and aid. Kim Jong-il undoubtedly hoped that the prospect of improved relations might pull his South Korean counterparts away from the US at a time of tension between Seoul and Washington. Thus, foreign aid, regime survival, and hope that US armed forces may leave the Peninsula have motivated North Korea’s periodic, brief overtures toward the South.

Kim Jong-un has used the 2018 Winter Olympics and follow-on meetings to achieve two goals. His immediate need is food aid and sanctions relief. North Korea requires approximately five million tonnes of cereal per year. In 2017, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization reported rainfall during the peak growing season was at its lowest level since 2001 when cereal production was two million tonnes. The drought may be amplifying the effect of sanctions. The food distribution system, ineffective at best, is only providing three hundred grams of food per person, daily. Poor agricultural output and sanctions are likely forcing North Korea to raise quotas for its fishermen, which explains the increase in North Korean fishing vessels recovered by Japan. Since Tokyo began tracking these “ghost vessels” in 2014, the twenty-eight recovered in November is a single month record. In 2017, one hundred and four ships were recovered, nearly double the sixty-six in 2016. Like his father, Kim Jong-un is counting on the kindness of the Moon Jae-in government to feed his people and get sanction relief.

Pyongyang’s second, long-term goal is to create tension between South Korea and the US. In this context, North-South engagements since the 2018 Winter Olympics concluded are particularly worrisome. North Korea has proposed improved relations and de-nuclearization in exchange for security guarantees and direct talks with the US. The Moon Administration has eagerly embraced Kim Jong-un’s offer and is attempting to push the Trump Administration into direct talks.

There is nothing wrong with US officials talking to their North Korean counterparts, but there is serious danger in external expectations overtaking the initial purpose of bilateral dialogue. Moon Jae-in ran on a platform featuring North-South rapprochement. Improving relations with the North would likely boost his popularity in South Korea. Therefore, he will probably forcefully encourage the US to compromise with North Korea. Other parties such as China, Russia, and the Europeans may also pressure the US into accommodating North Korea.

With the international community expecting the US to compromise, Kim Jong-un probably hopes he can replicate the outcomes from the Sunshine Policy era. North Korea will limit concessions while relying on others, particularly South Korea, to pressure the US. Similar to the Sunshine Policy era, Seoul’s desire for progress toward reunification and Washington’s reluctance toward policies it perceives as appeasing the Kim’s could create US-South Korea tension. Exacerbating the possibility of US-South Korea friction is the perceived personal animosity between Moon Jae-in and Donald Trump. If taken to its extreme and to some extent based on President Trump’s own campaign rhetoric suggesting leaving the Korean Peninsula, Kim Jong-un may hope that North-South rapprochement will set events in motion creating irrevocable tension between Seoul and Washington.

While it may seem unlikely, North Korea wants tension between South Korea and the US to lead to US forces leaving the Peninsula. Pyongyang has repeatedly made this request in the past, because its leadership views the removal of US forces as the key to reunifying the peninsula. Without the US military presence, the Kim regime believes South Korea lacks conviction and, therefore, is vulnerable. Since 1953, Pyongyang has argued that US forces saved South Korea’s oppressive puppet regime in Seoul during the Korean War and that the South Korean people would rebel against that government if it were not propped up thanks to Washington’s support.

Although aid, sanctions relief, and exacerbating US-South Korea tension are likely primary factors shaping Kim Jong-un’s decision making, there are other considerations as well. Given its ability to control internal messaging and the goodwill attending the Winter Olympics engendered, North Korean participation probably had few drawbacks. Similarly, its willingness to talk with the South Koreans may demonstrate to patrons in China and Russia that Pyongyang is making an effort – thus sanctions should be eased – even if nothing comes from dialogue. Recognizing these factors is important, but only reinforces the need for approaching North Korea with caution.

Kim regime policies are always predicated upon self-interest. History has shown that North Korea only engages with South Korea and the US when it believes there is an opening that it can manipulate. Flushed with success and optimism from the 2018 Winter Olympics, Seoul’s dialogue with Pyongyang and encouraging US-North Korea bilateral talks is playing right into Kim Jong-un’s hands. North Korean overtures are intended to entice South Korean officials and create division between Seoul and Washington. Kim Jong-un is trying to replicate the conditions and outcomes of the Sunshine Policy era while hoping that perceived tension between Presidents Trump and Moon will separate the US and South Korea more than during the early 2000s. While reunification is a worthy pursuit, South Korean and US officials must recognize that Kim Jong-un will never move down this path unless it is on his terms.

 

Davis Florick is a James A. Kelly Non-resident Fellow with the Pacific Forum and a Senior Fellow with the Human Security Centre. Mr. Florick earned his master’s degree in East-West Studies from Creighton University and is completing a War Studies master’s degree at King’s College London.

Image Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=21244159