Confusion in the South Korean
ranks By Bruce Klingner
The
South Korean ship of state, buffeted by gales of
criticism from virtually all points of the compass, is
being pulled by countervailing currents in opposite
directions in its policy toward Washington.
A
litany of US announcements on the future of its military
forces on the Korean Peninsula, apparently made without
consultations with Seoul, have led to skepticism over
Washington's continuing commitment to South Korea's
defense and the future nature of the alliance. The South
Korean opposition has lambasted President Roh Moo-hyun's
administration for being at least partly responsible for
the situation by its quest to pursue a policy more
"independent" of Washington.
Seoul now stands
poised, much like the ancient mariner Ulysses seeking to
navigate between the threats of the Scylla and
Charybdis, to confront its own twin dangers of either
changing course to renew its commitment to the US or to
continue drifting further away from the alliance, while
the North Korea Sirens beckon the South toward
engagement.
Questioning the
alliance South Korean officials and citizens,
reeling from the initial surprise announcement of the
removal of a US combat brigade comprising 12,500 US
troops out of the total 37,000 stationed there, reacted
with shock and dismay to subsequent statements of
additional downgrades and revisions to the structure of
US Forces, Korea (USFK).
South Korean media
universally interpreted Washington's lack of prior
consultation on an issue of such strategic importance to
the country as a clear indication of severe troubles in
Seoul's relationship with Washington. The unilateral
nature of the US decisions is also being interpreted as
punishment for Seoul's foot-dragging over its deployment
of 3,000 soldiers to Iraq.
US Defense Secretary
Donald Rumsfeld's comments on the inevitability of a
fundamental change in the deployment of USFK and that
the alliance was at a "critical juncture" affirmed to
South Koreans that they faced a sudden, fundamental
shift in their security paradigm. South Korea forcefully
rejected an apparent US policy trial balloon that called
for US-South Korean joint humanitarian and peacekeeping
military operations in the region, dismissing the
proposal as "burdensome".
Seoul immediately
sought to play down concerns over the transition,
stressing that the two countries would work together to
strengthen the "future-oriented alliance in line with
the new security environment and status of Korea". South
Korean officials, however, have grown increasingly
concerned that the United States has begun to
marginalize South Korea in its Asia policies.
Policymakers, perhaps fearful of a repeat of secretary
of state Dean Acheson's infamous 1950 speech delineating
Korea as "outside our defense perimeter", cited a recent
speech by the head of the US State Department Policy
Planning staff that failed to include South Korea among
"key bilateral relationships" as indicative of a
fundamental shift away from the bilateral alliance and
toward a broader focus on China and Japan.
Reviving the opposition The Grand
National Party (GNP) had adopted a more muted and
conciliatory tone after its losses in April's national
legislative elections but, after the recent US
announcements, seized upon the opportunity to criticize
Roh for jeopardizing the bilateral alliance.
GNP
lawmaker Lee Sang-deuk, chairman of the Special
Committee for Security Policies and Troop Deployment to
Iraq, said "there is a serious problem in the allied
diplomacy between the US and Korea" and accused the Roh
administration of causing the situation by
"procrastinating on the troop dispatch". Another GNP
legislator characterized it as a "manifestation of
accumulated conflict between the US and South Korea".
Conservative media speculated that the US would
not have considered withdrawing the brigade if the
alliance had not already been weakened by Roh's pursuit
of more "progressive and independent" policies.
Political analysts have speculated on the potential for
a total withdrawal of US troops, with references made to
the US departure from its previously sacrosanct bases in
the Philippines.
Manning the pumps The
Roh government now is engaged in frantic damage control,
responding to criticism both for being blind-sided by
the announcements, as well as conspiratorial allegations
that Seoul knew of Washington's plans for a year and
kept them secret from the general populace. The media
have similarly clamored for Roh to accelerate
improvements to South Korea's independent military
capabilities to offset the US losses while, at the same
time, complaining that the president's quest for a
policy less dependent on Washington was a primary
impetus for the US withdrawal.
As South Korean
officials clamor to postpone the US troop withdrawals
until 2007, the Korea Times concluded that the military
alliance had already "crumbled to an irreparable level".
Several newspapers called for Seoul to immediately
assess the effect the US withdrawal would have on South
Korean security; determine how to offset the decreased
deterrent capabilities through an independent defense
strategy; and articulate how it would prevent the cuts
from affecting the nation's credit ratings. Donga Ilbo
called on Roh to "finally face up to the reality of the
Korea-US alliance" and dispense with his "clumsy
independent line".
Fueling
anti-Americanism? Amid attacks on the Roh
administration, the South Korean media have reported on
issues that will likely resonate with resurging
anti-American sentiment in the populace and cause
additional strains in the bilateral relationship.
Lim Dong-won, former head of the National
Intelligence Service and minister of Unification, told
the press that North Korean leader Kim Jong-il canceled
planning for a visit to Seoul in the spring of 2001 due
to the US administration's emerging hardline policy
toward Pyongyang. Although Lim's role as the principal
architect of former president Kim Dae-jung's "Sunshine
Policy" of engaging the North clearly gives him a vested
interest in the policy's legacy, his role as the chief
negotiator with North Korea provided him direct access
to Kim Jong-il.
Conservative critics have used
Kim Jong-il's refusal to a reciprocal visit to the
South, as agreed to during the inter-Korean summit, as a
means to lambaste the engagement policy as naive and
one-sided. If Lim's claims are correct, they could
undermine, to some degree, criticism of Kim Dae-jung's
and Roh Moo-hyun's efforts to secure transformation of
the North Korean regime through engagement. Lim's
comments may, therefore, engender resentment in the
South, which may perceive a missed chance to have
maintained momentum from the summit to attain progress
in inter-Korean negotiations prior to efforts being
subsequently derailed by revelations of North Korea's
covert uranium-based nuclear-weapons program.
The South Korean public may interpret Lim's
announcement, along with the US administration's recent
rejection of Kim Jong-il's request for a bilateral
meeting, conveyed through Japanese Prime Minister
Junichiro Koizumi, as additional indicators that the US
is placing its own policy considerations over a
resolution of the inter-Korean impasse.
Missed opportunity Although
Washington's decision to withdraw troops from the
peninsula was likely driven primarily by pressing
security needs in Iraq brought on by an overextension of
the US military, the nature of the US announcement has
strained the already tense relationship.
One
wonders why the administration of US President George W
Bush didn't seek to gain a public relations coup by
emulating former Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev's
masterly speech to the United Nations in the late 1980s
in which he pledged to remove 500,000 troops and six
tank divisions from Eastern Europe. US retorts at the
time, that such a move still left the Warsaw Pact with
an overwhelming military superiority, were drowned out
in the ecstatic European applause of Gorbachev as a "man
of peace" and left Washington stumbling to regain the
initiative.
Washington would have been better
served by presenting its Korean downgrade plans as a
joint effort with its stalwart South Korean ally to
stimulate confidence-building measures on the peninsula
and challenge Pyongyang to respond in kind. Although the
gesture would likely have been transparent, it may have
gained some support in the South rather than undermining
the Roh administration and alienating the full spectrum
of the populace.
Looking to the
horizon As South Korea ponders its policy future,
including the need for an increased defense budget
necessitated by the US withdrawal, Washington would be
well served to incorporate its ally in decisions that so
fundamentally affect it. Regardless of differences over
policy toward North Korea, unilateral US decisions on
security issues exacerbate existing misperceptions and
risk resurrecting the wave of anti-Americanism that
damaged bilateral relations during the presidential
election.
Discussions that are truly
consultative in nature would defray criticism over
Washington's unilateral policymaking tendencies and
reduce the inherent tensions brought about by the
maturing nature of the alliance, with Seoul seeking to
play a larger role.
Bruce Klingner is
director of analysis for the Intellibridge Corporation
in Washington, DC. His areas of expertise are strategic
national security, political and military affairs in
China, Northeast Asia, Korea and Japan. He can be
reached at bklingner@intellibridge.com
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