The Biden administration was formed to work on repairing alliances, and in Asia, the U.S. is making progress in defense cost-sharing talks with South Korea, which is expected to heal the rift between the two countries over the Trump administration’s exorbitant upward revision demands. However, it has recently come to light that the South Korean government may have explored building a nuclear power plant in North Korea. This is a reminder that for the U.S.-South Korea alliance, the North Korean nuclear issue is perhaps the more fundamental crux.
In the four years of the Trump Administration, the Moon Jae-in administration has been eager and aggressive on the North Korean nuclear issue, even going so far as to break with the U.S. concerted pace. The Biden Administration‘s policy toward North Korea has not yet been published, but experts in the field of South Korean diplomacy and security expect that the U.S. and South Korea may still find it difficult to avoid disagreement on the North Korean nuclear issue in the future. Against the backdrop of the U.S.-China rivalry, coupled with Japan-South Korea conflicts and other factors, South Korea may become the weak link in the U.S. alliance in Asia.
South Korean government may have explored building a nuclear power plant in North Korea
Suspicions surrounding North Korea’s nuclear power plants began when South Korea’s Audit and Inspection Agency (AIA) conducted an audit of the country’s decision to de-nuclearize its power policy. The agency found that the Ministry of Industry, Trade and Resources, which is in charge, had deleted a large number of relevant documents. When the list of deleted documents was exposed by the media, 17 of them involving North Korea immediately became the focus of attention. One of the most controversial documents was the “Program for the Promotion of Nuclear Power Plant Construction in the North Korean Region,” which was produced between the first and second inter-Korean summits held in 2018. Under public pressure, the Ministry of Industry made the program public. The document begins with the statement that the report is only a resource for the ministry’s internal discussion of possible options for future inter-Korean economic cooperation, and is not an official government position.
Shin Beom-chul, a former policy planning officer at the South Korean Foreign Ministry and director of the Center for Diplomatic Security at the Economic and Social Research Institute, told Voice of America that North Korea’s withdrawal and development of a nuclear program after joining the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty constitutes a problem under its obligations under the terms of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty to provide nuclear technology to such a country. Also, other countries are prohibited from providing nuclear-related technology to North Korea under U.N. sanctions against it.
“The South Korean government’s position is that it is only exploring how to provide energy in accordance with North Korea’s denuclearization phase and therefore does not violate the UN sanctions. What the truth actually is is unclear, pending the prosecution’s investigation,” Shin Beom-chul said. “But if the government considers providing nuclear power plants to North Korea without the prerequisites (for denuclearization), then South Korea is committing a violation of international rules and may be subject to sanctions.”
South Korea, U.S. in bed together on North Korea nuclear issue
South Korea’s eagerness on the nuclear issue is thus evident. In contrast to the conservative government’s policy of pressure aimed at denuclearization, the progressive Moon Jae-in administration has focused on the peace process, treating inter-Korean relations and the nuclear issue as separate issues and making national autonomy the overriding principle. This tone predisposed South Korea to friction with the Trump administration, which had a policy of “maximum pressure and involvement. However, due to North Korea’s eagerness to untie sanctions, Trump’s unorthodox approach and South Korea’s stated willingness to engage in unconditional dialogue, the U.S. and North Korea used the 2018 PyeongChang Winter Olympics as a starting point for a period of dialogue.
The second U.S.-North Korea summit in Hanoi, Vietnam, in February 2019 ended inconclusively, after which differences between the U.S. and South Korea on their policies toward North Korea gradually surfaced. Less than a week after the Hanoi talks, the South Korean government announced it would move forward with economic cooperation programs such as restarting tourism at Mount Geumgang and the Kaesong Industrial Park. The U.S. State Department responded to a request for comment by stating that North-South relations and the North Korean nuclear issue cannot be resolved separately, and in January 2020, Moon Jae-in proposed to promote inter-Korean cooperation programs such as individual tours to North Korea at a New Year’s press conference, and the State Department responded to a reporter’s question by saying that all UN members should comply with the sanctions resolution against North Korea. In response, the South Korean Ministry of Unification said, “North-South relations are our problem and will actively seek feasible programs to promote them.”
South Korea’s attitude has become stronger as Moon enters his final year in office. Not long ago, Moon urged the new U.S. administration to inherit the gains made by the Trump administration on the North Korean nuclear issue; South Korea’s new Foreign Ministry chief Chung Eui-yong also expressed confidence in North Korea’s determination to denuclearize. In stark contrast to the South Korean view, the U.S. State Department has repeatedly said it is reassessing its policy toward the North, noting that the North’s determination to proliferate nuclear weapons-related technology is seriously threatening international peace and security. All indications are that the lack of synchronization between the two countries on this issue will continue.
Cha Doo-hyun, chief research officer at the Asan Institute for Policy Studies in South Korea, told VOA that “[the Biden administration] has a very strong distrust of North Korea and does not believe that the current Kim Jong-un regime in North Korea has a more positive posture than previous regimes or is ready to negotiate with the United States, so they are bound to adopt a very different strategy than the Trump administration, which has a try-and-see attitude. If the current South Korean government tries to promote projects beyond the scope of sanctions, such as inter-Korean economic cooperation, the U.S. is likely to stop it.
Shin Beom-chul believes that the Biden administration is also likely to include other issues on top of the North Korean nuclear issue, and the two countries will have differences in this regard as well. “The South Korean government has been avoiding issues such as human rights in order not to irritate North Korea. From the content of this call between Moon Jae-in and Biden, the South Korean government released content focusing on the peace process on the Korean Peninsula and the nuclear issue, but the Biden administration is talking about ‘the North Korean issue.’ …… The U.S. view is different from South Korea’s, and South Korea is likely to face a difficult situation.”
Will South Korea become the weak link in the U.S. Asian alliance?
Against the backdrop of the U.S.-China rivalry, U.S.-South Korean differences over the North Korean nuclear issue superimposed on increasingly acrimonious Japan-South Korea relations make the possibility of South Korea becoming a weak link in the U.S. Asian alliance rise significantly.
Japan and South Korea are at odds over the 2018 South Korean Supreme Court ruling on a case of forced labor expropriation by Japanese companies in World War II, which reached a fever pitch the following year after Japan removed preferential treatment for semiconductor material exports to South Korea. Although South Korea’s countermeasures to terminate the Japan-South Korea Military Intelligence Protection Agreement in the same year were cancelled at the last minute, South Korea downgraded its expression of Japan from “partner” to “neighbor” in a recently released defense white paper.
The Japan-South Korea rift clearly expands China’s opportunity to pull South Korea from the U.S. side to its own. China and South Korea share a common anti-Japanese experience and already agree on historical issues, with conservative former President Park Geun-hye attending China’s military parade commemorating the 70th anniversary of the victory. At the same Time, South Korea’s economic dependence on the Chinese market has allowed Beijing to be soft on Seoul on political issues. 2016 saw severe restrictions on Korean flows in China following the deployment of SAD; and recently Xi Jinping, in a call with Moon Jae-in, expressed his willingness to launch a year of cultural exchanges between China and South Korea with the South Korean side.
Professor Kang Jun-young, director of the Center for International Area Studies at Korea University of Foreign Studies and professor of Chinese, told VOA that the U.S.-China rivalry has brought South Korea’s strategic value to the forefront, and Beijing’s actions are actually a message to South Korea not to tilt toward the U.S. “China is facing a lot of situations at the moment, with no friendly forces in the international arena, and the situation around it is not optimistic. China sees South Korea as a possible friendly country in terms of the general trend, which is why Xi Jinping spoke with Moon Jae-in before Biden …… but parts of the call risked upsetting the U.S. and releasing the wrong signal, making the U.S. feel that South Korea is concretizing with China before the U.S. policy toward North Korea, the Korean Peninsula policy, gets consultation.”
“The U.S. is expanding the role of the alliance from the past on North Korea to China, but the Biden administration will continue the Trump administration’s hard-line stance on China. With this tone, the U.S. is expected to live up to the South Korea-U.S. alliance and the U.S.-Japan alliance on this issue. From this perspective, while the South Korean government attaches importance to its alliance with the U.S., it also needs to attach importance to its economic relations with China, and a certain amount of discord between the two sides (of South Korea and the U.S.) is expected to be possible on the part related to China,” Shin Beom-chul believes. More importantly, this will be a long-term trend and “even with the change of government, it is unlikely that South Korea will keep its distance from China and rely solely on the ROK-US alliance.”
This means that South Korea’s choices on specific issues will affect the quality of the U.S.-South Korea alliance. Cha Doo-hyun noted, “From the U.S. standpoint, it is expected that efforts will continue to promote South Korea’s participation in cooperative mechanisms such as the Quad Plus …… Whether South Korea participates in multilateral cooperative mechanisms such as the Indo-Pacific Strategy or the Quad Plus is likely to be a factor in determining the extent of ROK-U.S. cooperation. factor in determining the extent of ROK-US cooperation.”
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