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Why turmoil in South Korea raises the stakes for the US
WASHINGTON DC – For the US President, Joe Biden, news of the political upheaval playing out on the streets of South Korea is a deeply unwelcome development that threatens to upend one of the uncontested foreign policy triumphs of his administration.
The White House was reportedly in communication with the government of President Yoon Suk Yeol hours after he unexpectedly declared martial law. Mindful of opposition claims that the South Korean leader is taking his country to the brink of a constitutional crisis, the stakes for the United States in the hours ahead are enormously high.
For the first two years of the Biden administration, US diplomats successfully battled to persuade Seoul and Tokyo to work more closely together, and bury at least some of their historic enmity rooted in Japan’s colonial domination of South Korea.
In August 2023, those talks gave rise to the signing of the Camp David Principles, that led to the three countries embracing a new security pact touted by American negotiators as a response to China’s growing expansionism in the Asia-Pacific Region. The agreement has been the Biden administration’s bedrock diplomatic achievement in the Asia-Pacific rim, and has even sparked lofty discussions about the eventual creation of an “Asian Nato”.
Only a fortnight ago, Biden reaffirmed the nature of the trilateral relationship in meetings with Yoon and the new Japanese Prime Minister, Shigeru Ishiba, in meetings held on the fringes of the Asia-Pacific Economic Co-Operation (Apec) summit in Peru. At the time, the South Korean leader was already locked in an increasingly intractable standoff with the opposition, which controls the country’s National Assembly.
Biden, in Lima, was attempting to cement the three-way relationship ahead of president-elect Donald Trump’s return to power. Trump and his key foreign policy lieutenants have indicated they may seek to force both South Korea and Japan to contribute more financial resources to offset the costs of the continuing protection offered by America’s defence umbrella. Now turmoil in South Korea is raising additional questions about the solidity of the trilateral bonds.
The stand-off in Seoul raises other short-term questions for the White House, which will urgently seek to damp down the tensions over South Korea’s proposed budget that have burst into open confrontation.
US policymakers will have noted that opposition to Yoon’s declaration of martial law is coming not only from the main opposition Democratic Party, but also from some prominent figures within Yoon’s People’s Power Party as well.
There is also likely to be American anxiety over possible efforts by the North Korean strongman Kim Jong Un to capitalise on the instability on the other side of the demilitarised zone that separates the two Koreas. Biden, in Lima, urged Chinese President Xi Jinping to dissuade Kim from deepening his commitment to contribute North Korean troops to Russia’s war in Ukraine.
Now, American diplomacy will be put to a further test as Biden – travelling in Angola – must deal with a crisis in Asia that presents a fresh hurdle for US diplomats seeking to prove that Washington retains the influence and capacity necessary to talk South Korean politicians down from their barricades.
I NEWS