Two junior directors from the South Korean trade ministry and their Japanese counterparts held an unusual six-hour meeting in Tokyo last Friday. It was a nightmare scenario for those who recall the security coordination between the United States, Japan and South Korea during the Cold War. Back then, the de facto tripartite hub-and-spoke alliance was solid and functional. Those four officials in charge of security-related export control may not be senior enough to remember the good old days of the 1980s.
For Tokyo, the measures announced July 1 were a well-crafted, World Trade Organization-consistent "silver bullet" that would hopefully put an end to the ongoing disputes with South Korea.
Optimistic Japanese officials, therefore, might have been startled to see a New York Times article on July 15 that said "Mr. Abe became the latest world leader to strike a blow against free trade, when he moved to limit South Korea's access to Japanese chemicals ... citing vague and unspecified concerns about national security."