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| Authors: | Carin Zissis |
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Updated: April 14, 2008
The longstanding U.S.-South Korea alliance, originally established during the early years of the Cold War as a bulwark against the communist expansion in Asia, has undergone a series of transformations in recent years. Since 1998, when political power passed for the first time from the dictatorial ruling party to the political opposition, the United Democratic Party, successive UDP governments have steered a more independent course from Washington, sometimes leading to friction. During the tenure of President George W. Bush, the once solid alliance went through a difficult period. Among the many issues that bedeviled ties was disagreement over how to handle Pyongyang’s erratic behavior, a generational divide in South Korea on the alliance and the U.S. military presence that underpins it, an ascendant China, and disagreements during bilateral trade negotiations. In 2007, the countries signed a bilateral free trade accord and agreed to a rearrangement of the military command structure that gives Seoul a greater say in its own defense. They also narrowed their differences on North Korea policy. In 2007, a conservative, Lee Myung-bak of the Grand National Party, won South Korea’s presidency, and his party followed up with victories in 2008 parliamentary elections, ending two decades of UDP dominance. Lee strongly supports the U.S. free trade agreement and takes a harder line on North Korea unlike his two predecessors.
When Japan lost control of Korea at the end of World War II, the United States and the Soviet Union split the peninsula into two territories pending promised national elections, which never took place. Instead, after Moscow and Washington failed to agree on a way forward, the United Nations in 1948 declared the Republic of Korea (ROK), with its capital in Seoul, as the only legitimate government on the peninsula. The Soviets rejected that assertion, and in 1950, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) invaded. The United States, heading up UN forces, came to the aid of South Korea. War ensued until 1953, when a cease-fire froze the front line at roughly the thirty-eighth parallel.
In 1954, the United States and South Korea signed the ROK/U.S. Mutual Security Agreement, in which they agreed to defend each other in the event of outside aggression. In 1978, the two countries formed the Combined Forces Command (CFC), based in Seoul and with a U.S. general at the helm, to defend South Korea. “For decades it was the threat from North Korea that was the glue that held the alliance together,” says Donald P. Gregg, chairman of the Korea Society and former U.S. ambassador to South Korea. But the South, ruled largely by U.S.-backed authoritarian regimes until the 1990s, underwent a shift in attitude toward North Korea under liberal administrations from 1998 to 2007. President Lee has promised better ties with the United States.
Deterrence against North Korea is central to the U.S.-South Korea alliance, but the South Korean government’s approach to the North underwent a major shift in the late 1990s. In 1998, South Korean President Kim Dae-jung adopted the “sunshine policy,” a variant of the “Ostpolitik” policies pursued by West Germany toward the Communist East during the Cold War. Kim’s initiative offered economic and humanitarian aid to North Korea in exchange for contacts between long-divided families and other cultural concessions. Kim’s successor, Roh Moo-hyun, continued the strategy in policy, if not in name, with the goals of thawing inter-Korean relations and persuading Pyongyang to stop its aggressive behavior.
However, President Lee Myung-bak’s departure from his two predecessors—voting for the UN Resolution condemning human rights situation in North Korea, making economic aid contingent on the denuclearization progress of the North, and putting forth his “Vision 3000” (PDF) policy—prompted angry reactions from North Korea. North Korea’s state newspaper called Lee a “traitor” and a “U.S. sycophant,” and Pyongyang expelled South Korean government officials stationed in the North and fired the missiles off the west coast—all ahead of Seoul’s parliamentary elections in April 2008, which bolstered the standing of Lee’s party.
Experts say there is a largely generational divide in South Korea over how to handle the North. The older generation remembers the war and is fearful of North Korea while the younger “386 generation” feels pity for the impoverished North and has stronger memories of their own nation’s dictatorial regimes. Former President Roh, a human rights lawyer during the 1980s, garnered his support from the younger generation who “think their previous presidents exaggerated the threat” to maintain authoritarian power, says Charles Armstrong, a Korea expert at Columbia University.
In 1994, North and South Korea, plus Japan and the United States, reached the so-called “Agreed Framework” Pact to end the North’s nuclear weapons research in return for economic and political concessions, as well as a Western-designed nuclear power generating plant. The United States, Japan, and North Korea established the Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organization (KEDO) to carry out the terms of the pact, including an annual U.S. shipment of 500,000 metric tons of oil to the DPRK until the first nuclear reactor would be completed. Oil shipments were suspended in 2002 in light of reports that North Korea was enriching uranium, and KEDO ended nuclear plant construction the following year.
Upon assuming office in 2001, President Bush ended diplomatic talks with North Korea, citing violations of the 1994 agreement by Pyongyang. By January 2002, relations frayed so badly that President Bush declared North Korea as part of the “Axis of Evil” in his State of the Union speech, referring to its nuclear weapons program. North Korea’s 2005 claim that it had nuclear weapons, punctuated by its July 2006 long-range missile tests, served to further exacerbate tensions and hardened the U.S. position against the DPRK. The White House demanded a continuation of the multilateral disarmament negotiations, which included South Korea, China, Japan, and Russia, and planned to intensify sanctions against North Korea if it did not return to the Six-Party Talks.
South Korea made cuts in humanitarian aid to its northern neighbor following the July 2006 missile tests, but Seoul questioned Washington’s hard-line approach, fearing it might provoke an aggressive response from Pyongyang. Roh downplayed the importance of the July missile tests, saying the weapons would not make it to the United States but would go too far to be a threat to Seoul. He did not want to lose ground on advances made in inter-Korean relations, but his response to DPRK missile tests and his opposition to increased sanctions drove a wedge into the U.S.-South Korea alliance. East Asia scholar David C. Kang said in 2006 that the “United States is angry with South Korea for not going along, and South Korea is angry about the United States ignoring all the gains South Korea has made.”
In February 2007, the resumption of the Six-Party Talks led North Korea to agree to begin disarmament process in exchange for fuel assistance. A set of events sent positive signs in 2007: the closure of North Korea’s main plant at Yongbyon in July; a second inter-Korean summit in October; and opening of the first cross-border railroad in December. But Pyongyang missed its January 1, 2008 deadline to fully declare its nuclear activities, and upon assuming office in 2008, President Lee hardened South Korean policy toward the north.
Up until 2007, when relations between the United States and South Korea suffered because of disagreement over how to handle North Korea, views in Seoul and Beijing on the issue had been in rough alliance. While both of North Korea’s neighbors are unhappy with the missile tests in 2006, neither China nor South Korea wants to push the country toward actions which could result in a sudden flood of refugees. Instead, leaders of the two countries were proponents of humanitarian assistance to the DPRK. China’s President Hu Jintao and Roh both sent food supplies after North Korea experienced deadly flooding in July 2006. At the same time, China and South Korea witnessed a rise in anti-Japanese sentiment, and memories of harsh periods of Japanese rule are shared by the two nations.
Before the February 2007 agreement, analysts said Washington seemed to be ceding its leadership of the Six-Party Talks because of its stance on North Korea. Gregg says in 2006 that Beijing has become “the leading player in the Six-Party process and we [the United States] are seen as really dragging our feet.” However, since the United States softened its stance and held bilateral talks with North Korea, leading to the breakthrough of February 2007 agreement, CFR’s Director of Studies Gary Samore says China feels increasingly sidelined.
In February 2007, U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates and South Korean Minister of National Defense Kim Jang-soo reaffirmed that the U.S. Force Korea (USFK), the combined American air, ground, and naval forces, will transfer its wartime command authority to South Korea by 2012. The peacetime command was transferred to Korea in 1994, and transition of the wartime operational control (OPCON) is expected to be completed on April 17, 2012. The current ROK-U.S. Combined Forces Command (CFC) will be disestablished. The two have agreed on a slow drawdown in the number of U.S.troops, as well as a redeployment of American forces away from populated areas close to the northern border. The United States handed control of some military bases over to South Korea in 2004, and announced its plans to decrease its number of troops from roughly 30,000 at present to 25,000 by 2008. The Bush administration already reduced the U.S.military presence in South Korea to 28,000 troops as the U.S. Defense Department saw greater need for military resources in Middle East conflicts. For his part, former President Roh depicted the power transfer, and gradual troop withdrawal as a matter of national sovereignty.
The rearrangement of the U.S.-South Korea military alliance has represented a hot domestic political issue in South Korea since the negotiation of command structural began. Citing concerns about Seoul’s defense preparedness, some conservative sectors in Korea insist on renegotiating the year of the transfer. The rise of South Korea’s defense budget from 2.8 percent of GDP in 2007 to 3.2 percent in 2008, and the costs of relocating U.S. troops out of the Yongsan garrison in Seoul, also faced criticism. Others were suspicious of the U.S. military presence and remembered the 2002 killings of two South Korean teenagers who were accidentally struck by a USFK armored vehicle, an incident which sparked widespread street protest.
Experts have expressed concerns over how the development in military alliance would shape the future of Northeast Asia. Michael O’Hanlon at Brookings posits that the realignment of the military may be perceived by North Korea as “a sign of weakening of the alliance’s strength and strong deterrence against the North.” However, Gen. B. B. Bell, commander of USFK, says the United States is continuously committed to the political alliance regardless of the military command structure. “Commanding control apparatus is not a statement of the commitment of the two nations to each other’s security,” said Bell during his visit at Korea Society. The restructure of the U.S.-Korea military alliance also reflects the changing role and paradigm of U.S. leadership in the world. Hyeong Jung Park, a former fellow at Brookings, points out that “the alliance now is designed more for assisting U.S. global and regional strategy than for the defense of South Korea in the narrow sense.”
The KORUS FTA was signed in June 2007 as the last trade deal agreed during President Bush’s “fast track” trade promotion authority. If ratified, the FTA would eliminate nearly 95 percent of all tariffs within three years. The deal was the biggest trade deal agreed by the United States since the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement. Korea is the seventh-largest trade partner of the United States and the two-way goods trade amounted to roughly $82 billion in 2007. The value of the trade is expected to increase by as much as 20 percent if the deal is finalized. During the negotiation process, both administrations faced opposition from strong domestic agricultural lobbies, but the breakthrough of the agreement came when the United States dropped pressure on opening Korea’s rice market and Korea agreed to resume importing American beef, which halted in 2003 due to fears over mad cow disease.
But both countries face obstacles in passing the deal through their legislatures, however. Although the deal is one of a few legacies from the former Roh administration that President Lee promised to carry out, the seventeenth session of Korean National Assembly is approaching the end of its term in June. In Washington, the deal has not been submitted to the U.S. Congress by the Bush administration. But U.S. domestic skepticism about free-trade, particularly ahead of 2008 presidential elections, threatens the deal’s prospects on Capitol Hill. During the U.S. presidential primary campaigns, democratic candidates Sens. Hillary Clinton (D-NY) and Barack Obama (D-IL) expressed reservations about supporting free-trade agreements, citing labor and environmental concerns.
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