hankyoreh

while South Korean President Park Geun-hye is pulled between a rearmed Japan and rising China.

In the winter of 2011, I visited the US for three weeks. I traveled through Washington, D.C., the South, the Midwest, and the West, finally reaching Hawaii. There is one scene that I remember clearly even now. In a conversation with three or four experts, the most senior member of the group asked me what I thought about the withdrawal of US forces from South Korea.

While I was critical of blind devotion to the US-ROK alliance, I had never seriously considered the question. I had considered it the kind of unilateral and impractical argument that North Korea would make, something that people might have talked about during the administration of former US President Jimmy Carter.

While I was hesitating, the expert pressed on: “Is there any guarantee that such a thing won’t happen?”

The question had taken me by surprise, and I didn’t have an answer ready.

It was only after I had looked a little more closely at relations between the US and China that I was able to understand the import of this question.

This week, I was asked a similar question by an old professor whom I met in Washington D.C. The professor asked me if South Korea is preparing for the power vacuum that could result from weakening American influence on the Korean peninsula.

A prime example of a power vacuum would be the withdrawal of US forces from the peninsula. This was the same attitude I saw in the expert I met in Hawaii four years ago.

These discussions taking place on the edge of American discourse illustrate the concerns of American experts as they contemplate the shift in power between the US and China. They are particularly interested in Northeast Asia, the region in which the China and the US are likely to collide first in their pursuit of hegemony.

Fundamental shifts in US-China relations will have a profound effect on the Korean Peninsula, though it is impossible to predict what forms this effect will take.

Compared to that, the questions of joining the China-led Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), which has plagued South Korean diplomats, and of South Korean President Park Geun-hye’s attending a Sept. 3 Chinese military review commemorating the victory against Japan in World War II, a more recent issue, are hardly worth mentioning.

When considering how US-China relations will affect the Korean Peninsula, there is a tendency to only focus on the aspect of conflict.

Of course, if there were a military conflict in the South China Sea – even an accidental one – it would block the route by which petroleum is brought from the Middle East to South Korea via the Strait of Malacca, causing an energy crisis. Even if there was no military involvement from the US, escalation of the conflict would inevitably lead to a confrontation between the US and China.

The US would demand that South Korea play some kind of role, while China would make a concentrated effort to keep South Korea neutral.

But even if there is a peaceful exchange of power between the US and China in Northeast Asia, South Korea must not assume that a rosy future awaits it. If American power starts to wane noticeably, the two countries could make a deal to give regional hegemony to China.

Indeed, after the global financial crisis in 2008, there was a fierce debate among American academics about calls for the US to reduce its role as the “world’s policeman.” Along with retrenchment in Europe and the Middle East, advocates of reducing the American role called for the withdrawal of ground forces from South Korea in order to cut costs in Northeast Asia.

If China were to assume hegemony from the US, how would it exert its influence on the Korean Peninsula?

Another scenario suggested by American academics is China and Japan getting over their regional rivalry and working together to exclude American influence from Northeast Asia. Considering Japan’s modern history – in which it has maintained close relations with the hegemonic powers of the British Empire, Germany, and the US, in that order – this scenario has its merits. Having bolstered its military strength, Japan will demand its share of power from China, and South Korea’s diplomatic influence will shrink even further.

The future of the Korean peninsula is being sucked into a black hole of uncertainty. Are we making preparations? The fact that, seventy years after the division of the peninsula, we must continue to watch history repeat itself in grisly ways, with mines blowing up in the DMZ, is not only frustrating, but horrifying.

By Yi Yong-in, Washington correspondent

Please direct questions or comments to [english@hani.co.kr]