Korea and Japan Agree to Sign Information Sharing Agreement, What Does this Mean?

This is a start at least to these two countries learning to play nice with each other:

South Korea, the U.S. and Japan will sign a trilateral information-sharing arrangement on Monday to better handle the evolving nuclear and missile threats from North Korea, Seoul’s Defense Ministry said Friday.

The arrangement is expected to strengthen the three-way security cooperation that has been lackluster due to historical and territorial feuds between Seoul and Tokyo, and Seoul’s push for a deepened strategic partnership with Beijing.

South Korea’s Vice Defense Minister Baek Seung-joo, U.S. Deputy Defense Secretary Robert Work and Japan’s Vice Defense Minister Masanori Nishi will sign the arrangement separately in their respective countries on Monday.

Under the deal, South Korea and Japan will not directly share their military information, but they will share it via the U.S. upon their consent, Seoul officials explained. Such an indirect method has been devised apparently in consideration of the public sentiment in the South against any military collaboration with its onetime colonizer.

“If South Korea offers information to the U.S., the U.S. would provide it to Japan upon South Korea’s consent. On the other hand, if Japan offers information to the U.S., the U.S. would give it to the South upon Japan’s consent,” a senior official at the Defense Ministry told reporters, declining to be named.

“The sharing will be limited to information about North Korea’s nuclear and missile threats. The country that has produced a particular piece of information will determine to what extent it will share its information.”  [Korea Herald]

You can read more at the link, but an example of how this would work is if the Japanese received intelligence of an imminent nuclear test they would give that intelligence to the US to give to South Korea instead of directly.  The whole setup seems juvenile, but President Park remembers what happened to President Lee Myung-bak when he tried to pass this deal a few years ago and it caused a public outcry and he had to cancel the deal.  It was so bad he had to fly to Dokdo to prove he was not a Japanese traitor.  Park is being smarter about this intelligence sharing deal with this indirect approach and noticed when she is having the deal signed; right in the middle of the holidays when few people are paying attention.