hankyoreh

President Yoon Suk-yeol of South Korea (left) speaks at a joint press conference following a trilateral summit with US President Joe Biden (center) and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida (right) held on Aug. 18, 2023, at the Camp David presidential retreat in Maryland, US. (Yonhap)

On May 20, 2022, a mere 10 days after the inauguration of Yoon Suk-yeol as president of South Korea, US President Joe Biden visited South Korea. Together, the two presidents toured a Samsung Electronics chip plant in Pyeongtaek, Gyeonggi Province, and the Korean Air and Space Operations Center. Since then, Yoon’s diplomacy has been focused entirely on solving the problems that the US throws in South Korea’s direction.

In order to patch up the thorny history between South Korea and Japan, his administration unilaterally conceded on the issue of forced labor during Japan’s colonial occupation with its third-party compensation plan for victims. Then during the Camp David summit in August of last year, Yoon went on to vow to strengthen military cooperation between South Korea, the US and Japan.

Yoon has been barreling down this path with blinders on, his sole focus being cultivating an image as a crusader for liberty on a quest to defeat what he calls “communist totalitarian forces.” Attempts to carefully balance necessary cooperation with the US and Japan for the sake of national security with a comprehensive strategy or commitment to managing naturally deteriorating relations with China, Russia and North Korea are nonexistent.

While the government has touted that it’s charted a course of multilateral diplomacy as a “global pivotal state,” some reckon that the administration’s navigation system has gone bust.

Bek Bum-hym, a visiting professor at Seoul National University Asia Center and former deputy secretary general of the Trilateral Cooperation Secretariat, says that the problem lies in the fact that “despite living in a precarious era of a rapidly changing international order, South Korea lacks a proper diplomatic plan based on firm principles, an understanding of the complex realities of military and economic security, and flexibility.” 

“As of now, it is much like steering the ship while refusing to look at a compass or use GPS, only to insist on fixating on a specific point as their final destination,” he says. 

“South Korea has not gained much from the Yoon administration’s diplomatic policies,” opined Kim Heung-kyu, a professor at Ajou University and the director of the university’s US-China Policy Institute. “But the costs have increased dramatically.”

In recent months, North Korea has redefined the relations between the two Koreas as those between “hostile” and “belligerent states,” and with South Korea emphasizing “peace through force,” the two countries are precariously locking horns, with neither backing down. The most pressing problem South Korea faces is that threats to its national security have mushroomed out of control as North Korea and Russia have become increasingly close amid a complete breakdown in inter-Korean relations.

Of course, the underlying cause of this change can be attributed to North Korea, which, after the failed 2019 US-North Korea summit in Hanoi, chose to change courses. Then there’s Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. However, the Yoon administration’s hard-line “values diplomacy” has failed to manage ties with Russia, allowing the situation to only deteriorate further. 

The situation has also been exacerbated by the fact that South Korea and China have been engaged in an emotional war of words without even discussing key issues such as North Korea’s nuclear capabilities, the economy and supply chains.

Since the first days of Yoon’s term as president, officials in Yongsan made no real effort to communicate with China, saying that strengthened relations with the US and Japan would make Beijing “respect” Seoul. 

The situation worsened when Yoon spoke out of turn regarding the situation surrounding Taiwan. Seoul’s Ambassador Chung Jae-ho — a high school classmate of Yoon’s — symbolizes the administration’s intent to give China the scolding Seoul thinks it deserves.

Add to that the heated clash between the two countries over comments by China’s ambassador to South Korea, Xing Haiming, warning not to “bet” against China, and Korea finds itself in a situation in which ambassadorial-level diplomacy between Beijing and Seoul has gone out the window.

The recent visits of Chinese local government officials to South Korea, Foreign Minister Cho Tae-yul’s push for a visit to China, and the move to hold a trilateral summit between South Korea, Japan, and China, are some positive signs that the two countries are on the verge of improving their relations.

“China is feeling the need to manage its relations with South Korea and is hoping for change after the April general election in South Korea,” Kim said. At the same time, China is still “very wary of the Yoon administration and the lack of signs showing that the South Korean government is going to go ahead with a general review and reorientation of its foreign policies still puts us in a precarious situation,” he said. 

Many are beginning to question the practical benefits of Seoul’s cooperation with both Washington and Tokyo. 

Japan continues to claim the Dokdo islets as its own and approved new textbooks that distort its imperial history in Korea. A recent data breach at the messaging service Line has prompted the Japanese Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications to provide administrative guidance that Korean tech company Naver sell off its shares in Line’s holding company. This move has caused controversy, with some claiming that the Japanese government is trying to pressure Naver, which has a stake in Line’s operator, to hand over control of the messenger to Japanese conglomerate SoftBank.

While relations between the US and South Korea seem sturdy with the strengthening of the US-South Korea alliance and large-scale investments by South Korean companies in the US, there exists much uneasiness ahead of the US presidential election in November, with Republican candidate Donald Trump repeatedly calling for a significant increase in South Korea’s share of the defense spending burden. Many experts also say that Korean companies need to prudently weigh the pros and cons in terms of profit of their large-scale investments in the US and act accordingly. 

“It is worth remembering that the US grew in influence during the 1970s and 1980s by pressuring Japan through the Plaza Accord” — which triggered an appreciation of the Japanese yen and the German mark in 1985 by the US to close its trade deficit — “to overcome its economic crisis,” says Cha Tae-suh, a professor of international relations at Sungkyunkwan University.

“During both the Trump and Biden administrations, the US’ main target was and is China,” Cha says. “However, the US hegemony also has a predatory streak, as it pressures its allies to increase investment in the US to revive its advanced manufacturing sector.”

By Park Min-hee, senior staff writer

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