RELATIONSHIP GOALS — For close to three years, South Korea’s President Yoon Suk Yeol was a D.C. darling, a Biden administration favorite for closely aligning his nation with U.S. interests and serving as a pillar of U.S. policy in Asia. But that high regard vanished when he declared martial law 16 days ago, threatening liberal democracy and the stability of a country key to peace in East Asia. And Yoon’s rash action cost him his job, leading to his impeachment by the National Assembly.
Now, some Korea watchers believe a recalibration of the close relationship is about to take place. A new — and more unpredictable — American president is set to take office within weeks. Lee Jae-myung, the opposition party leader, is favored to become the next president of South Korea — and he has very different foreign policy priorities from Yoon.
Despite being a deeply unpopular president in his own country because of his controversial rhetoric and his wife’s corruption scandal, Yoon had been considered a close ally of the U.S. because of his willingness to buck tradition. Unlike many presidents before him, he amped up aggression against North Korea, treated China with more hostility, and even attempted to bury the historical bitterness between South Korea and Japan in favor of a stronger alliance — a move that irked much of the Korean public that condemned Japan for trying to erase the memory of its past war crimes.
“Korea, Japan – being the two most important allies in the region — getting that connection between the two has always been seen as a really important piece for the future of U.S. foreign policy, and finally with Yoon they had someone who was seeing as they did: that history should be forgotten, that history was a detriment to future national security,” said Karl Friedhoff, an Asia studies fellow at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs.
Lee will likely throw a wrench in American plans for a stronger South Korea-Japan alliance in response to a rising China threat. Like many of the progressives before him, he’s publicly said that it is “regrettable that Tokyo’s unwillingness to let go of its imperial past continues to hamper trilateral cooperation between Japan, South Korea, and the United States.” He’s not explicitly against working with Japan, but the U.S. shouldn’t expect free-flowing communication between the two countries unless Japan does more to “overcome the legacy of tragic historical wrongdoings,” according to Lee.
Lee’s approach to North Korea will also stand in stark contrast to Yoon, whose hostility toward its neighbor has completely crumbled communication between the two countries over the past two years. Lee wants to push North Korea toward denuclearization peacefully, with partial rewards like sanctions relief in exchange for cooperation.
Despite the historically hawkish U.S. stance against North Korea, this might actually be a boon for President-elect Donald Trump, who tried to improve relationships with the country during his last administration. Lee will likely want to serve as the middleman in any prospective rekindling of the Kim-Trump bromance — if Kim even decides to bite the bait this time around. But the true elephant in the room will be China, the superpower which the U.S. has identified as a growing threat in the Asia-Pacific region — and which the U.S. expects its allies to adopt an equally hostile stance against. Yoon had no trouble framing China as an antagonist, even blaming Beijing for his own domestic problems. Lee, in contrast, criticized Yoon for cozying up with the U.S. at the expense of the South Korea-China relationship. Lee has written that “South Koreans have good reason to be concerned by Beijing’s increasingly assertive behavior,” but he emphasizes that China is South Korea’s largest trading partner — and possibly an important ally in persuading North Korea to denuclearize.
The urge to view Lee’s policies as contradictory to the U.S.’s East Asia security aspirations is understandable. Yet there’s one foreign policy that both Lee and Yoon are in agreement on: the U.S.-South Korea alliance. The U.S. is South Korea’s closest ally, and neither would do anything drastic to change that. Even the public is behind that decision: 91.6 percent of South Koreans said in a 2023 Gallup Korea poll that the bilateral alliance is important. It doesn’t mean that there won’t be an increase in friction between the U.S. and South Korea if Lee comes into office. But it does suggest that Lee will likely shy away from any decision — no matter what he’s said in the past — that truly threatens the relationship between the two countries.
“Every Korean president wants good relations with the U.S.,” said Dave Kang, who is director of the Korean Studies Institute at the University of Southern California. “No Korean president wants to abandon the U.S. alliance — that’s unthinkable.” Welcome to POLITICO Nightly. Reach out with news, tips and ideas at nightly@politico.com. Or contact tonight’s author at ckim@politico.com or on X (formerly known as Twitter) at @PoliticoCharlie.
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