[Column] Where should Korea’s diplomacy be headed?
Wie Sung-rak
The author is a former South Korean representative to the six-party talks and head of the diplomacy and security division of the JoongAng Ilbo’s Reset Korea campaign.
President Yoon Suk Yeol’s state visit to the United States is just 13 days away. As his visit follows the French president’s earlier summit with U.S. President Joe Biden, it could represent a success in our diplomatic protocol. Given the 70th anniversary of the alliance and the Yoon administration’s accentuation of the blood bond, both governments may have agreed to raise the level of the upcoming summit to the highest, both on formality and substance, for further cooperation between the two allies. As the summit will help define the future direction of our diplomacy, we must pay attention to the meeting.
The U.S. needs to urgently deal with China, Russia and North Korea, who defy international norms. The U.S. has been leading a crusade to unite the West after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine amid a heated U.S.-China rivalry for global hegemony. The U.S. wants South Korea, an industrial powerhouse and ally, to play a bigger role in the push than before. After President Yoon emphasized cooperation with the U.S. and international solidarity to protect freedom around the globe since taking office, Washington demanded Seoul side with it on key issues. The U.S. might be satisfied with the ally’s stern response to North Korea but not so over the South’s approach to China and Russia. Due to apparent resistance from China and Russia, South Korea was hesitant to put its value diplomacy rhetoric into action, particularly on issues such as security cooperation and human rights. Support for Ukraine was no different. As a result, the U.S. will want to draw a “forward-looking” turn from its ally when it comes to the issues of China and Russia.
On the Yoon administration’s part, the top priority will be placed on lifting the stature of the country through a chain of summit diplomacy, including his summit with Biden on April 26 and the Group of 7 Summit in May following his earlier summit with Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida in March. Strengthening the Yoon administration’s diplomatic footing and reinforcing the joint Korea-U.S. deterrence against the North’s increasing nuclear threats is important too. How much the government would accept the U.S. demands over the China and Russia issues — and how to join the U.S.-led global supply chain rebuilding — are also important matters to deal with.
South Korea will likely get what it wants from the summit — the elevation of its national image, for instance — partly thanks to Yoon’s state visit to the ally. The two allies are expected to take concerted action on the North Korean issues and make progress in ensuring the U.S. extended deterrence. But Washington will demand South Korea more aggressively participate in checking China and Russia. The question is, to what extent the South should comply with the demand closely linked to supply chains and military cooperation among South Korea, the U.S. and Japan?
Two adverse factors are the domestic public opinion increasingly negative of Yoon’s diplomacy particularly after his summit with the Japanese prime minister and the alarming power balance heavily tilted to the opposition Democratic Party holding 169 seats in the 300-member legislature. Such antipathy could be easily reflected in assessing the results of Yoon’s upcoming summit in Washington when considering the delicate interconnection between the government’s diplomacy with Japan and with America. For instance, the general public can hardly separate its disappointments with the president’s solution to address the wartime forced labor issue through a government-led fund from its assessment of his summit with Biden later this month. The controversy over U.S. intelligence agencies reportedly wiretapping the presidential office of its ally only helps fuel negative public views about the summit in Washington.
After the Yoon-Biden summit, Japan will likely welcome the results, while North Korea will decry them. China and Russia are expected to react negatively in proportion to the results of the summit. Beijing will likely ratchet up the level of its warning on the Yoon administration’s dramatic slant toward the U.S.
To effectively tackle a number of challenges ahead, the Yoon administration must fix the directions of its diplomacy over how much it will accept U.S. demands over the China and Russia issues and how to position itself between the U.S. and China and between the U.S. and Russia. The Yoon administration must take a comprehensive stance to strike a balance between the two groups. In fact, our past governments took an ad hoc approach to them case by case in the name of strategic ambiguity rather than taking an integral approach. The Yoon administration took a clearer position on reinforcing the alliance than its predecessors, but its policy toward China and Russia is still ambiguous.
Amid the deepening confrontation between the West and the East in the new Cold War era, South Korea can hardly avoid siding with the West. And yet, the country cannot be engrossed in the alliance due to the need to pursue denuclearization, peace, prosperity and unification under the constant nuclear threats from North Korea and with four major powers surrounding the Korean Peninsula.
The future direction of our diplomacy will be fixed depending on the results of Yoon’s upcoming summit with Biden. I hope the government presents a combined strategy to effectively deal with China and Russia while augmenting the alliance at the same time. Its diplomatic protocol ability will shine more when it is coupled with policy capability.
Translation by the Korea JoongAng Daily staff.
with the Korea JoongAng Daily
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