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Principal deputy national security adviser Kim Tae-hyo gives a press briefing on President Yoon Suk-yeol’s new North Korea policies at the presidential office in Seoul on Aug. 15. (pool photo)

Kim Tae-hyo, Korea’s principal deputy national security adviser, remarked on Tuesday that if former US President Donald Trump is reelected in November, the US could weaken the security umbrella it provides South Korea.

Kim made the comments during a lecture at the first Sejong Open Forum, which was organized by the Seoul-based Sejong Institute think tank on Tuesday under the theme of “The US Presidential Election and Korea’s Foreign Policy and National Security Strategy.”

In the event of Trump returning to the White House, Kim said, “The US could conceivably seek to renegotiate the deployment of strategic assets made available to us from the perspective of cost.”

Kim said that given Trump’s transactional view of alliances, Trump’s reelection could lead to the US watering down its policy of strategic deterrence against the North Korean threat compared to the Biden administration.

Kim predicted that Trump, if reelected, “will be eager to arrange a summit with North Korea.”

“Kim Jong-un can exploit Trump’s flair for the dramatic to pursue a strategy of direct dialogue with the US while sidelining South Korea,” the South Korean national security official said.

After mentioning the North Korean nuclear talks held during Trump’s presidency, Kim also predicted that “there won’t be the kind of ‘small deal’ we’ve seen in the past,” such as North Korea agreeing to freeze nuclear development and dismantle its long-range missiles in exchange for sanctions relief.

But Kim predicted that Trump’s reelection wouldn’t have a major impact on the agreement that the leaders of South Korea, the US and Japan reached in their trilateral summit at Camp David last year.

“The US won’t touch the real-time system for sharing warnings about North Korean missiles, multiyear plans for trilateral military exercises and agreements reached at Camp David that are absolutely essential for cyber cooperation and other areas of national security. Given the radical juxtaposition of risks and opportunities, we need a strategy that’s more daring, and more sophisticated,” he said.

Kim said that Kamala Harris, presidential nominee for the Democratic Party, regards [South Korea] as a dependable partner for making a rules-based world order grounded in pragmatism.”

According to the Korean national security official, Harris “considers it a goal of the US to also promote the interests of its allies, so even in conflicts she’ll take the coalition approach of sharing advantages with allies while countering the interests of enemies or rivals.”

If Harris is elected, Kim predicted, she’ll probably “fine-tune Biden’s strategy of ‘de-risking’ in policy toward China.”

“The names of the strategists who are advising Harris on foreign policy, national security issues and social issues are unfamiliar, which raises concerns about whether they’ll demonstrate strong charisma in the White House or US administration if they take power,” Kim noted.

“I get the impression that if I find myself working with them, I’ll have to take on a teaching role. We need to hit the ground running on the important issues, but they’ll need some time to figure things out and gain familiarity with and confidence in their work.”

“What I find myself thinking is that we need a combination of heavyweights and outside veterans to facilitate alliance affairs,” he added.

Granting that Kim was delivering an informal lecture in terms the audience could understand, the remarks might sound patronizing to Korea’s alliance partners given his status as a senior foreign policy adviser to the president.

Kim also addressed a controversy about his statement that “the important thing” is Japan’s feelings in a press interview on Aug. 16.

“To give my remarks in their full context, what I was saying was that the important thing is understanding Japan’s feelings and managing them effectively. But my remarks were cut short for the brief interview, which some people took as a perfect excuse to manufacture some fake news,” he said.

By Lee Seung-jun, staff reporter; Park Min-hee, senior staff writer

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