hankyoreh

Experts participate in a roundtable discussion of the topic

South Korean President Moon Jae-in took office in a situation where the US, China and Russia’s geopolitical rivalry over the Korean Peninsula was intensifying amid the growing severity of the North Korean nuclear crisis. Soon after Moon’s inauguration, there was a series of nuclear and missile provocations by North Korea and harsh responses by the Trump administration, which escalated tensions on the Korean Peninsula and limited the new Moon administration’s options in regard to foreign policy.

Such were the concerns of experts who declared that efforts to find an exit strategy are being hampered by the South Korea-US alliance during the afternoon session on the second day (Oct. 27) of the 13th Hankyoreh-Busan International Symposium (held at Nurimaru APEC House in Busan), which was organized on the theme of, “An assessment of the Moon administration’s three-power diplomacy and inter-Korean relations.”

The question of readjusting the South Korea-US alliance was originally raised in the US before Moon took office. During a hearing before the US Senate Armed Services Committee this past April, Victor Cha, former director for Asian affairs on the White House National Security Council, made four observations connected with readjusting the South Korea-US alliance after the next administration took power in the South.

First, Cha contended, North Korea would definitely engage in nuclear and missile provocations after the next South Korean administration came to power. Second, this would force the new administration, even if progressive, to cooperate militarily not only with the US but also with Japan, which would prevent it from improving inter-Korean relations. Third, China would not stop its economic retaliation over the deployment of the THAAD missile defense system – providing an opportunity, Cha urged, to separate South Korea from China. Finally, he suggested, South Korea should be given a greater role in the South Korea-US alliance to ensure that it would clearly stand with the US in the future.

“The system of trilateral cooperation between South Korea, the US and Japan [proposed by Victor Cha] would mean changing the nature of the South Korea-US alliance into a collective security system similar to NATO. The identity and the ideology of the South Korea-US alliance have never been stronger than they are now,” said Lee Hea-jeong, a professor at Chung-Ang University, during the symposium. “As long as South Korea relies solely on the US and assumes that North Korean provocations must be met by sanctions or a military blockade or deterrence through the alliance, there is no way out of the current situation.”

Attention should also be paid to the fact that China is changing. “The Xi Jinping Thought that was introduced during the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China at the beginning of Xi’s second term represents the complete revocation of ‘tao guang yang hui’ [韜光養晦, a strategy of avoiding the spotlight and keeping a low profile]. While Trump has failed in his ambition to ‘make America great again,’ Xi could succeed at making China great again,” said Lee Seong-hyon, a research fellow at the Sejong Institute.

This means that China’s willingness to participate in UN Security Council sanctions on the issue of North Korea’s nuclear weapons and missiles in order to avoid a conflict with the US could change in the future. “China’s foreign policy approach could shift toward a confident and aggressive foreign policy that regards competition with the US as ‘growing pains’ rather than something to be avoided,” Lee predicted. This means that a confrontation between the US and China over the North Korean nuclear and missile issue might make it possible to find a way out of the current impasse.

“Because of the clash between North Korea’s headlong drive toward ‘completing the state’s nuclear armament’ and the ‘madman strategy’ that President Trump has adopted toward the North, the Moon administration is facing structural rigidity that cannot be easily surpassed. The attitude that is needed in the current situation is to find issues on the Korean Peninsula other than the North Korean nuclear and missile issue – such as the ‘new economic map’ or the ‘new northern policy’ – and to concentrate on these with sincerity,” said Kim Chang-soo, policy assistant to the Ministry of Unification.

By Jung In-hwan and Noh Ji-won, staff reporters

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