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President Yoon Suk-yeol of South Korea stands with US President Joe Biden and Japan's Prime Minister Kishida Fumio ahead of their summit on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in San Francisco on Nov. 16, 2023. (AP/Yonhap)

Out of all of the administrations in South Korea’s history, the Yoon Suk-yeol administration has been the most aggressive in its continued attempts to strengthen the alliance with the US, as well as trilateral cooperation with Japan and the US. Two documents formally adopted in July are the fruit of such labor.

The problem lies in the fact that those documents greatly demean the sovereignty of South Korea’s military and have institutionalized South Korea’s subordination to powerful nations.

The first document in question is the “US-South Korea Guidelines for Nuclear Deterrence and Nuclear Operations on the Korean Peninsula.” The Ministry of Defense of South Korea and the US Defense Department created a joint principal-level Nuclear Consultative Group (NCG) in accordance with the South Korea-US summit held in April 2023 and the Washington Declaration, and completed the guidelines over the course of three consultations that took place until June.

The guidelines were officially signed by both defense agencies and adopted during the South Korea-US summit held in Washington on July 11.

To summarize, the guidelines declare the strengthening of the two countries’ cooperation on extended nuclear deterrence through South Korea’s conventional support of US nuclear operations in the Korean Peninsula. 

The concept of support is being taken a step further, as it includes the process of conventional nuclear integration. According to Seoul’s presidential office, conventional nuclear integration has allowed the government’s response to North Korea’s nuclear provocations to “evolve into an extended deterrence in which our organizational assets are partnered with the US when it comes to nuclear operations on the Korean Peninsula.”

President Yoon also boasted during a Cabinet meeting on July 16 that “the South Korea-US alliance has been firmly upgraded to a nuclear-based alliance in name and reality,” and that “US nuclear assets are specially assigned to missions on the Korean Peninsula.”

Fears about theater-level training exercises being held regularly

If South Korea and the US are to properly execute their nuclear and conventional strategic plans under the new nuclear guidelines, they will have to expand the current Nuclear Consultative Group and South Korea will have to overhaul its national defense and military institutions.

Korea needs to build up its military, which is key to national defense, to enable it to carry out nuclear deterrence and nuclear operations. That will be a key factor to consider in acquiring major weapon systems.

As a natural consequence, South Korea will have to acquire all its cutting-edge weapon systems from the US. The guidelines describe a seamless partnership, but in reality, that will only reinforce the US’ centrality and leadership in its alliance with South Korea. And the description of a nuclear-backed alliance will mean that joint operational plans will have to be updated with nuclear operations and nuclear war plans.

From the US’ perspective, the nuclear guidelines present almost no substantive obligations that go beyond fine-sounding words. The Nuclear Consultative Group is qualitatively different from the Nuclear Planning Group that operates in certain NATO countries where US tactical nuclear weapons are deployed, and that remains the case even if the phrase “nuclear planning” is used.

Until such time as US military assets engage in operations while equipped with nuclear weapons deployed in South Korean territory, all the South Korean military can do is acquire cutting-edge conventional weapons from overseas, protect US strategic assets dispatched to the Korean Peninsula and aid their operations there.

Reserving certain US nuclear assets for missions on the Korean Peninsula is unreasonable and unnecessary from a military perspective. Nearly any ICBM on the US mainland launched at Pyongyang would have the same flight path as if it were aimed at Beijing.

It would also be silly to slap a Korean Peninsula label on nuclear warheads ready to be loaded onto strategic bombers or submarine-launched ballistic missiles. Simply put, the US has gained a strategic advantage without taking on any additional obligations.

A genuine nuclear-based alliance requires exercises that simulate nuclear war. Of course, South Korea and the US’ previous joint military exercises have been criticized as nuclear war games. But as the two countries incorporate specific provisions about nuclear war into their joint operational plans, they will begin to hold yearly theater-level nuclear operation exercises of a kind the world has never seen.

Could Japanese troops step foot onto the Korean Peninsula once more?

Another problematic document (which the Yoon administration touts as an achievement) is the memorandum of cooperation on the Trilateral Security Cooperation Framework (TSCF) that was signed by South Korea, the US and Japan in Tokyo on July 28.

According to a press release by South Korea’s Ministry of National Defense, the TSCF “institutionalizes national security cooperation between the defense officials of Korea, the US and Japan in such areas as high-level policy deliberations, information sharing, trilateral exercises and exchange and cooperation on national defense to contribute to the peace and security of the Korean Peninsula, the Indo-Pacific region and beyond.”

This is an actionable document based on the joint statement adopted in a trilateral defense ministers’ meeting in Singapore on June 2, as well as on previous agreements reached in trilateral summits in Phnom Penh (November 2022) and at Camp David (August 2023). It doesn’t particularly matter whether a “memorandum of cooperation” is legally binding or not. When it comes to “officially” tying weaker countries to stronger ones, a single document is sufficient, whatever form it may take.

While the TSCF’s full text has not been published, a joint press statement from the three defense ministers makes clear that the framework is focused on “the Indo-Pacific region and beyond.”

Only perfunctory mention was made of North Korea’s nuclear threat, and there was a clear sense that securing the freedom of navigation in the East China Sea (including Taiwan) and the South China Sea, a key goal of the US and Japan’s Indo-Pacific strategy, is essential for “peace and stability.”

And so, South Korea, the US and Japan’s framework has inaugurated a “new era of trilateral cooperation” in which they “will further develop trilateral cooperation to effectively address regional challenges, provocations, and threats.” The vision here is South Korea being “institutionally” folded into a Cold War-esque adversarial coalition against China that has already “evolved” to a substantial degree and being expected to man the front lines of that coalition.

According to Shin Won-sik, South Korea’s defense minister at the time of the documents’ signing, the TSCF’s adoption was not due to the particularities of the Yoon administration. “Since this is a win-win situation for all three countries, I think the framework will be firmly maintained [even if power changes hands in South Korea or the US]. The three countries have also nearly reached an agreement on standard operating procedures,” Shin said.

Standard operating procedures are regulations that govern the actions that must be immediately taken by a country’s armed forces in specific military situations.

Reaching an agreement about standard operating procedures is even more important in terms of South Korea’s relationship with Japan than its relationship with the US. While South Korea-Japan military cooperation is a definite win for Japan, it is off-putting and concerning for South Korea.

But under Yoon, it’s no exaggeration to say that South Korea has been racing headlong toward greater bilateral cooperation, rather than resisting its gradual encroachment. Korea and Japan’s information-sharing agreement, known as GSOMIA, was restored; a trilateral system of sharing missile alerts was established; regular multi-domain joint military exercises were instituted; and the TSCF was launched.

The next step would be for South Korea and Japan to establish an acquisition and cross-servicing agreement. Even if they avoid that term, they could adopt standard operating procedures that amount to the same thing. Before long, the tramp of Japanese boots could be heard on the Korean Peninsula once again.

Through the plans of the US and Japan and the consent of the Yoon administration, South Korea, the US and Japan are steadily moving toward an alliance system. The South Korea-US nuclear guidelines and the TSCF consist of three kinds of integration: South Korea and the US’ conventional-nuclear integration, the joint operations command of Japan’s Self-Defense Forces that’s set to launch next year, and the joint military command the US Forces Japan will set up in response.

South Korea needs to rip off the mask of nuclear operations and nuclear deterrence against North Korea and drag itself out of the swamp of subordination and involvement in another cold war.

By Moon Jang-nyeol, former professor at Korea National Defense University

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