SEOUL — The South Korea-U.S. alliance, which marks its 70th birthday on July 27, has delivered significant dividends for both parties, but is also facing new frictions on both the strategic and economic fronts against the backdrop of a rising China.
The alliance — its past, present and uncertain future — were under the microscope at the Jeju Forum for Peace and Prosperity Thursday, a global conference set on the resort island off South Korea’s southern coast.
Calling it “an alliance of shared values,” U.S. Ambassador to Korea Philip Goldberg said it was exceptional not just for its durability, but also for its reach. “The partnership ensures peace in the region and cooperation with like-minded partners in the region,” he said.
The alliance was forged after the Korean War ended inconclusively in July 1953. Despite hundreds of clashes and testing crises since, ranging from commando raids and terrorist espionage to patrol boat battles and torpedo strikes, bilateral deterrence has kept a hostile, nuclear-armed North Korea — and a Korean War II — at bay.
Moreover, South Koreans fought under U.S. command in Vietnam, and subsequently took on non-combat roles in Iraq and Afghanistan. For the U.S., the peninsula provides GIs with a vital bridgehead on the Asian mainland.
Economically, the alliance has contributed to South Korea’s astonishing rise from poverty and destruction to one of the globe’s economic superstars.
Seoul, unlike Pyongyang, which sacrificed its economy on the altar of its military, had spare capital to invest in infrastructure and industry. That investment, combined with access to the U.S. market and the global trade system and lubricated by the sweat equity of a highly educated populace, enabled Seoul to forge an “economic miracle.”
The country also trod a bumpy — and sometimes bloody — political path, finally transitioning to full democracy in 1987. Today a top-10 global economy, a major producer of leading products and technologies and a powerhouse in popular culture, South Korea is widely admired as a zero-to-hero national success story.
But with prominence and success have come new challenges, and new strains on generally solid bilateral ties.
South Korea’s soaring global profile has dragged the alliance onto new terrain: “What was once a partnership for security on the peninsula has expanded into a comprehensive alliance,” Mr. Goldberg said.
South Korea’s national rise is rebalancing what was formerly a lopsided partnership into a near-peer relationship with Washington. That, too, creates inevitable challenges as Seoul gains a louder voice, and as a partnership aimed at deterring North Korea now has ambitions far beyond the tense, divided peninsula.
Security frictions
In return for Seoul renewing its commitment to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, the recent “Washington Declaration,” agreed to by President Biden and South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol during Mr. Yoon’s April state visit to the White House, established the bilateral Nuclear Consultative Group. It also touched on a still-sensitive nerve here — Can the South truly rely on the U.S. nuclear umbrella if North Korea launches a nuclear weapon its way?
Backers are hoping that the new consultative body, designed to reassure South Korea via nuclear sharing, will prove more effective than NATO’s comparable Nuclear Planning Group because of a far tighter circle of decision-makers.
“The NCG is bilateral, the NPG is multilateral,” said Lee Soo-hoon, a research fellow at the Korea Institute of Defence Analyses. “I think the NCG will be much more efficient in coming to synergistic agreement.”
But the Yoon government has taken flak from domestic critics who say Seoul should have its own independent nuclear deterrent. Relying on the U.S., they say, amounts to “violating ‘nuclear sovereignty.’” A recent poll found that over 70% of South Koreans agree with Mr. Yoon’s critics.
“I have heard that notion,” Mr. Lee admitted. He argued for not politicizing the issue, but suggested that a cost-benefit analysis should be conducted on whether it is better for South Korea to rely on the NGC on one hand or leave the international nonproliferation pact and develop a nuclear bomb of its own.
The nascent NGC needs further input as it takes shape, analysts say.
“The finger on the button remains in Washington, but the voice is in the ear of Washington every hour of every day,” said Patrick Cronin of the Hudson Institute. “That mechanism is going to grow.”
The NGC “is a very important first step,” said Kim Hyun-wook of the Korea Diplomatic Academy, but added, “I don’t think this is the final outcome.”
Ties with Japan
U.S. speakers at the Jeju gathering praised Seoul for patching up relations with Tokyo, where a feud between its two key East Asian allies has long bedeviled U.S. strategic policy for the region. “Trilateral security cooperation with Japan is a huge step forward,” said Alison Hooker of American Global Strategies. “I commend President Yoon for his huge step.”
While the forum was underway, a Japanese warship was drilling off Jeju with South Korean, U.S. and other counterparts. Earlier, while visiting the port of Busan, the Japanese vessel had flown a “Rising Sun” ensign.
The flag was met with angry protests by the prior Seoul government, due to its connections to Japan’s militarist past. The 2018 brouhaha led a Japanese vessel to cancel a visit to the Jeju naval review.
While South Korean-Japanese relations warm up, Seoul remains reluctant to commit to any role in the defense of Taiwan against a possible Chinese attack. Mr. Biden has been outspoken on the matter, stating that — regardless of the ambiguities of the Taiwan Relations Act — the U.S. military will fight for the island.
Mr. Lee noted that Japanese colleagues at the conference were “a little surprised” about South Korea’s reluctance on Taiwan and questioned whether Washington has prepared allies to deal with what many say is an escalating crisis over the island democracy’s fate.
“If there is a contingency, there will be a question of [South Korean-based U.S. forces] regarding the Korea-U.S. alliance,” he said. He suggested that the issue will be discussed “in different steps,” with the roles of U.S. forces in South Korea and Japan and South Korea’s own army and navy still to be determined.
Economic frictions
South Korea and the U.S., which signed a free trade agreement in 2012, last year did $227 billion in bilateral trade. (China remains the South’s single biggest import and export market.) South Korea is the world’s biggest market for U.S. beef, and since the Biden administration entered office, Korean firms have announced over $100 billion worth of investments in the U.S.
In addition to being leading providers of leading-edge components such as displays and semiconductors, “Korean companies produce critical components like EV batteries and solar panels,” said Mr. Goldberg, making Seoul a key player in the Biden administration climate policy hopes.
However, Washington’s policies to wall China off from key technologies could hurt trade and investment, with many believing it threatens the efficiencies of vital supply chains. The concerns are particularly acute here, given China’s outsized impact as a trading partner.
“The U.S. is making efforts to garner support from like-minded countries to build a new international regime to replace the old one,” said Lee Hyo-young of the Korean Diplomatic Academy. “Unfortunately, the U.S. is trying to break up patterns of [cross-border] economic interdependence.”
South Korean chipmakers reportedly have discreetly voiced concerns over a lack of transparency and consultation in U.S. policymaking.
Likewise, with the Biden administration seemingly embracing approaches such as managed trade and industrial policy to confront the China challenge, new frictions have arisen over U.S. subsidies to domestic companies. South Korean automakers, for example, do not qualify for subsidies contained in Mr. Biden’s massive 2021 Inflation Reduction Act — despite huge investments in the U.S.
South Korean supplies may also be sideswiped by the sanctions and other restrictions on high-tech computer chip production because of Mr. Biden’s CHIPS Act, designed to cut off Beijing from cutting-edge technologies that could have military uses.
“Korean companies are concerned about the conditions of the IRA and the CHIPS Act,” said Ms. Lee, warning of an upcoming “subsidies war.”
“There are questions of, ‘Are they going to give up on the U.S. subsidies in order to keep their factories in China?’” she said.
All this creates a lot of alliance maintenance work to do.
“We have a lot of challenges, including power-sharing over extended deterrence and working out the details of de-risking high technologies to China, and working out the rules of future trade and how to deal with economic coercion and the implementation of the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework,” the Hudson Institute’s Mr. Cronin observed.
IPEF is a U.S. led-initiative, announced in May 2022, to set standards in future technologies with like-minded partners, along with pillars on trade, supply chain, clean energy and anti-corruption practices. It was introduced after the U.S. in 2017 pulled out of talks on the prior Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal with countries across the region.
But Mr. Cronin added, “All of these are exciting opportunities to be involved in.”
