Sea Control - Sea Control 384 - India's Changing Relationship with South Korea with Abhijit Singh

Episode Date: September 29, 2022

Link:Revitalization of strategic ties between India and Korea – Assessing the possibilities of maritime partnerships, by Abhijit Singh, ORF Online, July 8, 2022. 

Hey folks, it's Jared. First a little news and expectation management. So we've been producing two episodes per week here at Sea Control for the last year plus. And that's been great, but it's also been pretty hectic for us. So going forward, at least for the next few months, I think you can expect one episode per week. And we'll plan to publish those on Thursday morning specific time. But today we have our old friend Abhijit Singh aboard and he'll be discussing how India's relationship with South Korea is changing and what opportunities that presents, particularly in the maritime sphere. This episode was edited and produced by Nathan Miller. I'd like to pause here to highlight our local chapters, whether you're in South Korea,

Egypt, Singapore, France, New York, India, or the Caribbean. Chances are there's a SimSec local chapter near you. You can find a full listing of our chapters and contact information on the website at simsec.org. So if you're interested, please reach out. Finally, I want to take the opportunity to recommend our partners in the SimSec Podcast Network, The Bilge Pumps. You can find Alex, Jamie, Drack, and a pod of Iron Brew Bottles wherever you download your podcasts. And with that, Kimbersman. You're listening to Sea Control, hosted by the Center for International Maritime Security. Aloha, shipmates, and welcome back aboard Sea Control.

My guest today is our old friend, Abhijit Singh, and we're going to be discussing his latest offering at ORF Online, Revitalization of Strategic Ties Between India and Korea, Assessing the Possibilities of Maritime Partnerships. So Abhijit, thank you again for joining us. Could you tell the listeners a bit about your background, please? Thank you, Jared, for having me on your show again. So just to talk a little bit about myself, I'm a senior fellow at the Observer Research Foundation, which is a public policy think tank in New Delhi. I head the Maritime Policy Initiative, where we look at maritime security issues and governance issues in the Indian Ocean and the Pacific. I've had a background in the

Indian Navy. I served on frontline ships, did some time researching maritime concepts and was part of the Doctrine Center in the Navy. I did played a part in the writing of the 2007 Indian Maritime Strategy. I've been in the think tank world since 2008, initially in defense think tanks and since 2016 with the URA, where, as I said, I have taken some keen interest in the maritime security affairs of the eastern Indian Ocean. Well, thank you again for joining us, Abhijit. As a reminder to the listeners, all opinions, they are our own and not reflective of any institution with which we might be otherwise associated.

So what has been the historical relationship between India and South Korea, and why do you see that relationship expanding now? So India and South Korea relations have historically been cordial. I would say they've been marked by trust, a certain affability, and goodwill. Now, India and Korea are in different geographies. In that sense, they've never been politically at odds with each other because there's been very little to put them in their interests in conflict. What's noteworthy, however, is that they have a slightly different approach to security and geopolitics. And despite that, they've managed to work well together.

So there has, as I said, never been really any time when New Delhi and Seoul have been on different pages politically. They generally empathize with each other's concerns, each other's areas of interest. Seoul has, by and large, been supportive of India's rise in the world stage. New Delhi has backed the ROK's political agenda in East Asia, particularly the cause of peace and reunification in the Korean Peninsula. But I have to say that politics has not really been the unifier of the relationship. I think if there has at all been a unifier, it has been economics. And I would say that ever since the opening up of India's economy in 1991, Korea was one of the first to take the initiative and seize that opportunity.

Korean companies became very active in India over the past about two decades. Samsung, LG, Hyundai, these have all become household names in India. And Indian companies too, like Mahindra and Mahindra and Tata Motors, have invested in South Korea. So bilateral trade today, which is primarily driving the relationship, is up to about $21 billion. We have a comprehensive economic partnership in place. We are looking at something like $50 billion in trade by 2030. And South Korean companies, despite the competition in the Indian markets, are managing to hold their own. One other thing I might like to state about this relationship before we come to security is that culturally, too, the ties have been quite strong.

You know, Korean culture is a big draw in India, particularly among young folks, young people in India, where K-pop, Korea pop, Korea drama is very popular. There's a story among older people of a 13th century princess from Ayodhya in India that went over to South Korea and got married to a king. And apparently a few presidents and prime ministers in Korea draw their lineage from that from that princess. So cultural ties have been quite strong. And that has been another lever that has been on the driver of the relationship. I'm going to tell you, I did not anticipate us diverting to a quick conversation on K-pop as part of this. I'm going to steer clear of it before we both reveal our actual ages and how out of touch we are with that scene. but I am glad that you brought it up. How has President Moon Jae-in's new Southern policy changed the dynamic?

Significantly. I think President Moon Jae-in's policy to engage with its Southern partners has really propelled the relationship forward. So what happened was that in the pre-2017 era, the two countries did engage a lot on a high level, but the fact was that they existed on the periphery of each of those imaginations. So for Korea, India was a distant land that had little stake or standing in the affairs of East Asia, and New Delhi, too, did not quite see South Korea as a player in the Indian Ocean, and I would say that is still the case. But what happened with the NSP, which is the new southern policy, is that Seoul began to recognize that it needed to do more with countries that were beyond its near periphery, that is, towards the south.

And it identified Southeast Asia and India, ASEAN and India, as the two partners that it needed to engage with. And so over the past few years, what we've seen is a concerted effort on the part of Seoul to bridge those gaps in economy, in diplomacy and in security, also technology. And in that sense, this is a more robust, a more forward-reaching, a more proactive policy from South Korea towards India. And therefore, now we are beginning to reap the benefits of that policy that President Moon Jae-in put in place back in 2017. Can you explain the 2019 agreement for both navies to provide one another with more logistical support? And then how has that agreement been executed in practice? So in the period between 2016 and 2021, India signed a number of logistical pacts with so-called like-minded partners. Now, the rationale was to extend maritime presence and strategic reach to areas that India had hitherto not been deploying its maritime forces in.

The Indian Navy, like a lot of other navies around the world that have, that are blue water navies and that like to deploy in far corners of the world, recognized that what we actually need to deploy forces is greater interoperability and facilities abroad. That meant that we needed bases, we needed bases, facilities where we could have greater deployments and we could, we could get fuel, we could have rest and recuperation. So for that reason, India went in for these logistical pacts. Now, in the case of South Korea, might I say that we've not quite been able to leverage the pact in a way that was originally intended. You know, unlike France and the US, with whom India has managed to better capitalize on those logistical facilities, with South Korea, there have been few instances of, say, cross regional deployments and basings.

That is because, as I said earlier, India and Korea are in different geographies. we have different theaters of operation. South Korea operates in the East China Sea, India in the Eastern Indian Ocean. And therefore, there has not really been a chance for us to do so much together in each other's strategic literates. Also, I would like to say that the South China Sea, which is a contested space, there has been a degree of reluctance on the part of both India and South Korea to deploy their forces. You know, any Indian ship that needs to proceed from the Indian Ocean to the East China Sea needs to traverse to the South China Sea and ditto with South Korea. If they have to deploy a ship into the Indian Ocean, it has to pass to the South

China Sea. And China tends to see these deployments through the South China Sea as a signal to China and a provocative signal to China. So I think there's been some hesitancy on the part of both countries to deploy in this region. But that notwithstanding, what the two countries have really focused on is defense cooperation. There has been a move to improve defense industrial collaboration, and there is a roadmap that they drew up in 2020 that prioritized cooperation in defense technology with land, aero systems, defense R&D, collaboration in testing, certification, quality control. All of these things are now getting priority. So whilst we have not done very much on the maritime security cooperation front, apart from piracy, anti-piracy activities,

we've moved forward on defense cooperation. Well, let's go back to that maritime security question. What future cooperation or collaboration do you think is possible in the maritime domain? A couple of areas. First, capacity building. I think capacity building is primarily where South Korea can be of help to India.

Following the crisis with China on the border in 2021, India has been trying to upgrade its naval, postcard, and air facilities capabilities in mainland as also coastal island territories. In particular, in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands in South Korea can help in construction of some of the infrastructure that we need in that critical space. Second, and more important actually, is shipbuilding and submarine construction.

This is an area that India has identified for cooperation with South Korea. The South Korean company, Daewoo Shipbuilding, has been interested or has at least evinced some interest in taking up the Indian project, the P-75I, which is the follow-on to the P-75 submarine project that is on in India. The fact that a couple of firms have actually declined that project,

they have withdrawn their bids for that project, including the firms from Germany, from France, from Russia, and from Japan, it means that South Korea is now a front-runner for that project. Of course, we don't quite know how things are going to play out in the future, But there is a possibility that South Korea might actually back that project.

Apart from that, the state-owned Hindustan Shipyard Limited has announced that it will cooperate with the Korean shipyard in another joint shipbuilding project. So shipbuilding is a big area where these two countries can cooperate. I know for a fact that in the area of anti-mining, there has been some collaboration between India and Korea. we could not a proposal that came up earlier you know a few years earlier could not fructify but there's hope that it will go into the future the third area i might identify is maritime domain awareness now again there has been a drive from the indian navy side to improve situational awareness in the in the maritime commons with a particular focus on the eastern indian ocean and again there as you probably know we have a fusion center that has been operating for for some time

there. We'd like, New Delhi would like SEAL's help in setting up some radar stations, AIS chains, other infrastructure in partner countries in the Indian Ocean, as also help with capacity building in humanitarian aid and disaster relief.

That would be a big step forward. And lastly and most importantly, I think, we've got to get back to operations. We've got to look at operational security, meaning we've got to do more exercises together. So in the past three years, there have really been only two deployments from India's side to South Korea. One in 2019, where two ships had visited, and one in 2021, where just one ship had visited. So you can imagine that in about 36 months, we've had just two or three ships visiting, which is not good enough for two countries that aspire to do much more with each other in the maritime materials. And so I think that this would be my fourth area that we can do much better in South Korea. You mentioned South Korea had some reservations about being more assertive in the Indian Ocean.

What are those reservations? I think South Korea, as you probably know, has a close relationship with China. Anything that would provoke China would be problematic for Seoul. But I suspect some South Korean scholars and policymakers also see China's growing economic interests in the Indian Ocean as part of the course. They believe that Chinese presence in the Indian Ocean isn't particularly malign because China is there only to protect its trade interests. That's not a line of thinking that India follows or India approves of. India believes that the Chinese are expanding their presence in the region with an intention or an ambition to project China as a major security provider in this region. This is a de facto hegemony of sorts.

And therefore, there is much that India and like-minded states need to do to push China out of this region. The Chinese Belt and Road Initiative also is something that India has certain reservations against. But we don't see any clear statements being made from South Korea's side criticizing the Belt and Road Policy. South Korea seems to believe that China is a partner, partner in the developmental realm, an economic partner. And we do know for a fact that a lot of spare parts to the equipment, to the goods, the technological goods that South Korea makes actually come from China. So Seoul cannot afford to antagonize China. So that is one of the reasons why they have been reluctant to take a firm stand on maritime security in the Asian literals, as also on the Indo-Pacific. Although I see with the new presidency, President Yoon, there is some hope that South Korea might move that conversation forward in terms of what it needs to do in the security realm with like-minded partners.

So I think you answered quite a bit of my next question. I'm going to ask it anyway. If you have anything to add, feel free to chime in. Otherwise, we'll just move along. but how do you see South Korea balancing a desire for an increased relationship with India? And then what are some of its very real concerns with China when you look at its geography and its existing economic relationships? So I think the primary concern that South Korea has is that this whole narrative of China's dominance in the Indo-Pacific region, or so-called dominance in the space and the literals, is it actually intended at containing China's growing heft and China's growing authority. It's a fact that China has been modernizing at a rapid pace, but that has not in any ways been to South Korea's disadvantage. The other issue really is that

South Korea doesn't seem to get very well along with Japan, because they don't have a really good relationship with Japan, which by the way, is beginning to change. Just in the recent few days and weeks, there have been moves from the front side of the US, Japan and South Korea to sort of mend fences between Korea and Japan and sort of get them onto the same page. But that notwithstanding, Korea does not sort of agree to the fact that this whole Indo-Pacific narrative and the way it's playing out and in the way these deployments are being made in the Western Pacific, particularly around Taiwan, are all meant to push back China, meant to contain growing Chinese power, makes South Korea a bit uncomfortable.

And it also feels that Japan's inclusion in most of these initiatives tends to place Japan on a higher pedestal than South Korea. I suspect it's the same with India, that they feel that India gives a lot more importance to its relationships with the U.S., with Japan, with Singapore, Vietnam, Australia, and that it does not quite treat South Korea with the sort of reverence that it does with other like-minded partners. I think that has been a problem for a few years, but that also, I think, has started to change ever since the new southern policy was put in place and India's at-east policy was put in place. We are doing much more on the trade front, on the investment front, in diplomacy and in security. So I think that we're now on a path where our outreach can be much more robust and we can make common cause with each other and try and fulfill each other's strategic agenda in our respective spheres of interest. Well, let me timestamp this for listeners. We are recording this Saturday, 10th of September. So if there's some sort of dramatic change in the diplomatic relationships that you just laid out, you just mentioned that Japan and South Korea seems to be thawing on a day to day basis at this point. But if there's some sort of dramatic change that you and I aren't talking about, that's the reason.

Final question for you. What role does the U.S. play, if any, in moving this partnership forward? I would say the U.S. plays a very important role in moving this forward. All of the assumptions that India and Korea will do much more together in the literals and in the eastern Indian Ocean, or for that matter, in the Western Pacific, are premised on the supposition that the U.S. will be backing it. But what's happened is, I believe, after the foreign Ukraine, Russia's foreign Ukraine, there has been a shift in U.S. attention away from the Asian literals to Europe. Of course, the crisis in Taiwan has changed that a bit. After the visit of the U.S. Speaker, Ms. Pelosi, things seem to have drifted back to the maritime realm, and the U.S. seems to be giving some attention to what's happening in the space. But there is a degree of ambiguity about how the Biden administration is going to continue to respond to the growing China challenge in the Pacific and in the Indian Ocean, given that Russia is such a big challenge already for European states. If the U.S. begins to get disinterested in the affairs of Asia, then I think there is only limited progress that India and South Korea will be able to make in this space. I think we need the backing, the political backing of the US. We also need hard material economic support from the US to do much more in the realm of trade investment. And there's been a proposal for an Indo-Pacific economic partnership. There, India and South Korea can do much more. Again, that will depend on what sort of support we get from Washington.

So the U.S., you're right, is a critical player or a critical facilitator of India-South Korea strategic relations. Well, unfortunately, that's all the time that we have for it. I'd like to thank my guest, Abhijit Singh. Abhijit, where can we find you online and what are you working on next? So I am online on ORF. You can visit the ORF's website and find me. I'm active on Twitter. All of my writings are generally posted online, so you should not have any difficulty finding me there.

I'm working presently on two projects. One, I'm looking at maritime governance in the Indo-Pacific region with a particular focus on the Indian Ocean. I've been looking at climate change and, you know, issues of how climate problems and governance problems might affect traditional security and non-traditional security going forward. Second, I'm also working, I'm doing paper on the aircraft carrier project. As you know, we have recently commissioned the INS Vikrant, our latest carrier. In fact, our first indigenous carrier. And I'm giving some attention to this debate that is on in India and other parts of the world over whether the aircraft carrier is still relevant in the new maritime milieu, where there is disruptive technology, there are hypersonic missiles, etc. My sense is that it still is. But once my paper is done, then we'll know whether there's people that subscribe to that view or not. Well, I look forward to reading it. It does seem like you pump out about an article every week or two.

So tough to keep up with you, but it's a rewarding follow for those of you who join him on Twitter. Thank you again for joining us, Abhijit, to the listeners. Thanks for tuning in. We'll see you next time. © BF-WATCH TV 2021 Thank you for watching.