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| Balbina Hwang |
She believes such efforts will not only show the allies' strong unity but also help coordinate responses to North Korea, while urging China to play a bigger role in containing the reclusive country's provocations.
"It is a very positive sign that the U.S. and South Korea have agreed to a trilateral meeting with Japan on the sidelines of the G20 summit," Balbina Hwang, a visiting professor at Georgetown University's Center for Security Studies, said in an interview.
She served as a special adviser on East Asian affairs in the George W. Bush administration.
"Such trilateral cooperation is crucial, especially because it is becoming more evident that China's cooperation regarding pressuring North Korea is proving to be unsuccessful," she said. "If any cooperation needs to be stressed, it should be among U.S. allies."
The agreement came at the first meeting between South Korean President Moon Jae-in and U.S. President Donald Trump last week. Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe also agreed in a telephone call with Trump, Monday, to hold the meeting to discuss increasing pressure on North Korea.
On Tuesday, the North said it successfully test-fired an intercontinental ballistic missile that flew about 930 kilometers for 40 minutes over the East Sea.
The G20 summit will be held in Hamburg, Germany, July 7 and 8. Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin will also attend.
"The fact the three leaders are meeting at all sends an important message of willingness for the three countries to cooperate," Hwang said.
"There are worries that South Korea-Japan relations will be rocky under Moon, so such a meeting will help to alleviate those concerns."
In her view, the strongest message they could send to the region ― North Korea, China, and even Russia ― is "they would coordinate on more vigorous joint military exercises in the region, such as defense drills and search and rescue missions."
However, the Washington-based North Korea expert said that cooperation alone will not achieve "resolution" of the nuclear issues, although it is a minimum requirement.
"Ultimately, I do not believe the issue can ever be resolved short of a dissolution of the North Korean regime," she said.
"The best we can hope to achieve is containment of the North's existing program, focusing on non-proliferation."
Cost-sharing in the alliance
As for the Moon-Trump summit, Hwang said the most positive aspect was the remarkable agreement between the two nations on Moon's proposed approach to North Korea.
"Most importantly, the Trump administration has supported South Korea's role as the lead in promoting the environment for cooperation and peaceful improvement of inter-Korean relations," she said.
She described the first summit as "rather successful," saying expectations before the meeting were rather low and that its purpose was to set a good tone and chemistry between the leaders.
"Characterizing it is a win-win for both sides is not really an appropriate characterization, however, I think the minimum was achieved by both sides," Hwang said.
She said substantive issues that could be key areas of contention between the two, such as the deployment of a Terminal High Altitude Area Defense battery, renegotiation of a free trade agreement and expansion of joint military exercises, were not directly addressed in the joint statement
The former research fellow for the Institute for National Security Strategy in Seoul stressed that Moon should deal with the issue of "cost-sharing in the alliance" in a very sophisticated way.
She expects that it may become an issue of great political contention between the two allies since it seems to be a priority of Trump with all global allies, and key to his "America first" policy.
"Therefore, in order for this to not become a major issue, it will be very important for Moon not to portray the alliance as a burden of cost to South Korea, as has been the tendency of previous progressive South Korean leaders," Hwang said.
She called on the South Korean leadership to support the alliance as a mutual good that is primarily beneficial to South Korean society and crucial to its defense and stability, rather than just a cost that must be borne by the Korean people in exchange for U.S. support and commitment.
