Relations between South Korea and China are unlikely to suffer despite Seoul's recent landmark fence-mending agreement with Tokyo to resolve the issue of Japan's wartime sexual slavery, a U.S. expert said Monday.

South Korea and Japan reached the agreement last week, removing the biggest thorn in their relations and offering hope for significant progress in U.S. efforts to forge stronger security cooperation with the two allies in a region marked by a rising China.

"The PRC's warm feelings toward South Korea may ebb a bit as a result of the pact, but Beijing cannot easily criticize another government -- the sort of interference with internal affairs which it routinely decries when directed in its direction," Doug Bandow, a Korea expert and senior fellow at the Cato Institute, said in an article posted on the institution's website.

The PRC is the acronym for China's official name, the People's Republic of China.

"Moreover, the bilateral economic ties are too important and great for the two nations to drift apart," Bandow said.

The expert quoted an unidentified State Department official as describing the Seoul-Tokyo deal as "strategically consequential."

Bandow also said that bad ties between the two allies "hindered U.S. efforts to isolate and contain China and add pressure on North Korea to moderate its behavior."

Still,any sweeping military cooperation between Seoul and Tokyo appears unlikely, the expert said, noting that South Korean President Park Geun-hye is nearing the end of her term and the two countries face "very different security situations."

"In contrast to Japan, the South fears North Korea more than the PRC. The historical and territorial disputes between Beijing and South Korea are very unlikely to lead to war," he said. "Thus, irrespective of Washington's wishes, it makes sense for Seoul to continue to prioritize its relationship with China over that with Tokyo."

Bandow also said that Seoul's relations with Beijing will suffer only if the South appears to "actively join the U.S. in seeking to contain China, and that "Seoul is unlikely to make that mistake."

"The South Korean-Japanese settlement is a positive step. But while it will ease tensions between America's two top allies, it isn't likely to turn their relationship into a new anti-China axis.

Washington's job in East Asia has gotten easier, but only somewhat," Bandow said. (Yonhap)