A joint operation for tripartite cooperation

CHUN SU-JIN
The author is the head of the Today-People News team at the JoongAng Ilbo.

U.S. Air Force First Lt. Lucas Crouch, a fighter pilot, flew over many battlefields, including in Iraq. But he didn’t just press the launch button for missiles. He dropped many boxes full of teddy bears, snacks and medicine as he participated in Operation Christmas Drop, a U.S. military operation held every November. The U.S. forces parachute gifts for 20,000 residents of over 50 Pacific Islands, including Palau, with allies.

In an interview in Hawaii, where the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command is located, Crouch said he always looked forward to the operation every year, adding that 2021 was especially unforgettable. In the operation that started from the U.S. military base in Yokota, Japan, Korea and the U.S. worked together. He recalled that participants from Korea and Japan asked him to deliver messages in the beginning, even though they were facing each other. But they eventually opened up and became one for this operation, he said.

I met Crouch as a member of the Korea-Japan joint reporters for trilateral cooperation, which was set up by the U.S. Embassy in Korea. It was a place to explore the possibility of increasing and diversifying the momentum of trilateral cooperation among Korea, the United States and Japan, as agreed to at Camp David in August. The word that all the U.S. senators and representatives, government officials and think tank experts mentioned at the meeting was “institutionalize” the tripartite cooperation.

There were talks about establishing a system by laying the foundation for the cooperation to become a constant instead of being swayed by the domestic political variables of each country. U.S. republicans and democrats were no different. The same was true at the subsequent Tokyo session.

Next year, Korea will hold a parliamentary election, and the United States will have its presidential election. Can the trilateral cooperation from Camp David overcome its challenges? The U.S. side unanimously said it will continue even if the tenant of the White House changes. Notably, Republican Senator Bill Hagerty, a former U.S. Ambassador to Japan, promised to continue it.

How about Korea? The answer is as simple as Alexander the Great, who cut off the Gordian knot with a single stroke. The answer is to put Korea’s national interest first, before the pro-Japanese, pro-U.S., anti-Japanese, and anti-U.S. disputes.

I saw a ray of light from the Operation Christmas Drop that Lt. Crouch told me about. In December 2021, two years before the Camp David agreement, when the presidential election in Korea was in a fog, Korean and Japanese soldiers were willing to wear Santa hats for the children in the Pacific Islands.

Thoroughly institutionalizing the agreement for none other than Korea’s national interests will be a Christmas gift and miracle for freedom, democracy and the rule of law.