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President Yoon Suk-yeol of South Korea and President Joe Biden of the US toast at a banquet for Yoon’s state visit to the US in the East Room of the White House on April 26. (Yoon Woon-sik/The Hankyoreh)

To mark the 70th anniversary of the South Korea-US alliance, President Yoon Suk-yeol of South Korea and US President Joe Biden held a summit in Washington on Wednesday with a focus on strengthening ties based on the two nations’ shared values.

The summit is expected to go down as a turning point in the Yoon administration’s foreign policy, as it not only dramatically strengthened the security alliance through the establishment of the Korea-US Nuclear Consultative Group (NCG), grounded in the Washington Declaration, but also expanded cooperation in economic, technological, cultural and information fields, deepening Korea-US ties and consolidating Korea-US-Japan cooperation and integration into the neo-Cold War framework.

In the joint statement and the Washington Declaration issued after the summit, South Korea and the United States pledged to strengthen their security alliance, signaling a quantitative and qualitative shift.

The two countries established the Nuclear Consultative Group, a regular meeting at the undersecretary level to discuss extended deterrence against North Korea, and stipulated specific operations of extended deterrence, including the regular deployment of US strategic assets such as strategic nuclear submarines (SSBNs) to the Korean Peninsula and simulations of a nuclear crisis.

“By including an action plan for extended deterrence tailored to South Korea in the Washington Declaration, we have raised the operational capability of extended deterrence to a qualitatively different level than in the past,” said Kim Tae-hyo, the first deputy director of the National Security Office, at a press briefing.

South Korea and the United States also agreed to realign their joint defense posture through joint execution and planning of conventional support to US nuclear operations in South Korea, enhanced joint education and training activities on the application of nuclear deterrence on the Korean Peninsula, the introduction of new interagency tabletop simulations, and new tabletop exercises with US Strategic Command, which is responsible for nuclear force operations.

At the same time, the US rejected calls for independent nuclear armament of South Korea that had emerged in some circles by including in the Washington Declaration the reaffirmation of South Korea’s non-nuclear status and compliance with its Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) obligations and received assurances from the South Korean government of its absolute support for the US Indo-Pacific strategy and the Taiwan Strait issue.

Seoul and Washington aligned on a hard-line stance on North Korea. In a joint press conference after the summit, President Biden publicly warned that “a nuclear attack by North Korea against the United States or its allies or [. . .] partners is unacceptable and will result in the end of whatever regime, were it to take such an action.”

The two leaders also pledged to “stand with Ukraine,” leaving questions about South Korea’s possible lethal weapons support for Ukraine.

The two countries also adopted a strategic cybersecurity cooperation framework, a joint statement on the identification of a Medal of Honor recipient from the Korean War, a joint statement on bilateral science and technology cooperation, and a joint statement on South Korea-US space exploration cooperation.

“Through the summit, the South Korea-US alliance has established the five pillars of the security, economic, technological, cultural, and information alliance on the foundation of a values alliance,” said Kim Tae-hyo.

In the area of economic security, the summit did not lead to much progress. On the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) and the CHIPS and Science Act, both of which have a significant impact on South Korean companies, the joint statement merely noted that the two countries “appreciated the recent efforts made by the ROK and the United States” over the acts, and “committed to continue close consultations.”

Some interpret the summit as a decisive steppingstone for strengthening trilateral cooperation with Japan. “The two Presidents emphasized the importance of US-ROK-Japan trilateral cooperation, guided by shared values, driven by innovation, and committed to shared prosperity and security,” the joint statement reads.

Biden’s encouragement of Yoon’s diplomacy with Japan, calling it “political courage,” is also indicative of this direction. South Korea, the United States, and Japan are discussing holding a trilateral summit on the sidelines of the Group of Seven summit in Hiroshima, Japan, next month, the Yomiuri Shimbun reported on Thursday.

By Kim Mi-na, staff reporter

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