"Can S. Korea qualitatively change its alliance with the US?" (article in liberal south Korean paper Hankyoreh)

"Has the alliance between South Korea and the US, presupposed by the existence of a common enemy, run its course?"

"The “America First” mentality has been damaging to US’ image as an ally."

Excerpts:

The alliance between Seoul and Washington is often lauded as a “successful” one. During the Cold War, South Korea fulfilled its purpose for the US as a “forward base in the struggle against communism” and the “showcase of capitalism and democracy.” Leaning on the US for its national security, Korea was able to make its great leap into advanced nation status.

Park Myung-lim, a professor at Yonsei University, has characterized Korea’s alliance with the US as one “with substantial tension” and “conflictual.” [...] the scholar referred to the Janus-faced nature of the US in Korea during the Cold War as both a guarantor of authoritarianism and a sponsor of [liberal] democracy.

Washington did not support the April 19 revolution in 1960. It was aware of, but did nothing to stop, the military coup by Park Chung-hee on May 16, 1961, and in the immediate aftermath, spurned Prime Minister Chang Myon’s request to quash the mutiny. When Chun Doo-hwan staged his own coup on Dec. 12, 1979, and oversaw a massacre in Gwangju the following May, the US stayed silent and abetted Chun.

For these reasons and more, many Koreans who lived through the military dictatorships of the 1960s-80s remember the US as a backer of dictatorship. They also form the historical backdrop for the anti-American sentiment that was rampant in Korea in the 1980s through the 2000s.

In recent years, the US has increasingly pressured or made requests of its ally according to its own national interests or international strategy. US President Joe Biden’s visit to South Korea in May 2022, shortly after the inauguration of the Yoon Suk-yeol government is illustrative of the shift in relations between the two countries.

Upon arriving at Osan Air Base on May 20, Biden went straight to the Samsung Electronics’ Pyeongtaek campus, where he called for strengthening the Korea-US alliance through semiconductors.

Two days later, before leaving Seoul on May 22, Biden met privately with Hyundai Motor Group Chair Chung Eui-sun at the Hyatt, where he was staying, and secured an announcement of US$5 billion in additional investment in the US by 2025. His visit schedule started with Lee Jae-yong of Samsung and finished with Chung from Hyundai/Kia. This signified that the economy was his main priority — and that even there, it was less about how he could help and more about what he could get.

Citing the need for global supply chain reorganization, Biden has been overtly pushing Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix to cut off ties with China and not to fill the gap left there by US semiconductor companies. He also declined to include Hyundai/Kia among the targets for electric vehicle tax credits in the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA).

The shifting in the South Korea-US alliance can also be seen in Washington’s strategy to pressure Beijing. The US has looked for stronger trilateral security cooperation with South Korea and Japan as a way of hemming China in, and it has demanded improved relations between Seoul and Tokyo as a necessary step in that direction.

The increasing decoupling of the two sides’ national interests raises the need for a new concept of our relationship.

An overwhelming majority of South Koreans still name the US as our most important neighbor when it comes to peace on the Korean Peninsula. In a Gallup Korea opinion survey during the second week of August 2022, 75% of respondents selected the US as Korea’s most important neighbor, compared with just 13% who picked China.

Yet South Koreans are not entirely on board with policies that uniformly favor the US. When asked for their opinion on South Korea’s best diplomatic response to the US-China competition in a National Barometer Survey between July 11 and 13, 2022, an equal 38% of respondents each chose “foreign policies based on the South Korea-US alliance” and “balanced US and China policies that take China into account.”

“Sustaining the South Korea-US alliance, denuclearizing the Korean Peninsula, and establishing a peace regime on the peninsula is an impossible trinity of policy goals that cannot be achieved simultaneously,” explained University of North Korean Studies professor Koo Kab-woo. “South Korea is facing a trilemma,” he concluded.

On the topic of the “future of the South Korea-US alliance,” Moon Chung-in — someone who formerly served as Sejong Foundation chairperson and who has long been involved in friendly cooperation between South Korea and the US — raised three main questions “Is the alliance a means or an end in itself?” he asked. “Can the national interests of South Korea be unified with those of the US? And can strategic dependence on the US coexist with South Korean autonomy?”

An alliance presupposes an enemy. Can South Korea achieve a qualitative change in the alliance for the sake of denuclearization, peace, and prosperity on the Korean Peninsula? Is the idea of a collaborative relationship with the US that does not involve an alliance just an impossible dream?

When you can’t imagine something, it can never become reality.