The Biden-Yoon Summit, With Scott Snyder

LINDSAY:
Welcome to The President's Inbox, a CFR podcast about the foreign policy challenges facing the United States. I'm Jim Lindsay, director of Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. This week's topic is the Biden-Yoon summit.

With me to discuss President Biden's meeting last week with South Korean President Yoon is Scott Snyder. Scott is senior fellow for Korea studies and director of the program on U.S.-Korea policy at the Council. He has written extensively on South Korea's foreign policy, U.S.-South Korean relations, and security in Northeast Asia. He is the author of South Korea at the Crossroads: Autonomy and Alliance in an Era of Rival Powers among other books. And he has a new book set to be released this November titled, The United States-South Korea Alliance: Why it Might Fail and Why it Must Not. Scott, thank you for joining me.

SNYDER:
Thank you for inviting me, Jim.

LINDSAY:
So Scott, South Korean President Yoon was in Washington, DC for a state visit last week. I believe it's only the second state visit of Joe Biden's presidency. I want to dive into what it is that Presidents Biden and Yoon discussed, or perhaps didn't discuss, but first we have to discuss the state dinner. President Yoon did a very nice rendition of the opening verse of Don McLean's classic, "American Pie." What's the backstory?

SNYDER:
I think the backstory is that he's probably been practicing a lot for a long time at various drinking parties with his coworkers over many years, and my guess is that "American Pie" is probably one of his go-to songs.

LINDSAY:
Well, I note that President Biden then gave President Yoon a signed guitar signed by Don McClain.

SNYDER:
Yep, that was very nice, but it also shows that everybody was anticipating that he would be a good singer.

LINDSAY:
Well, it's a good thing that his favorite song wasn't The Animals' "We Got to Get Out of This Place," which would've set a bit of a different tone. But sort of getting down to the serious part of our conversation, Scott, why exactly was President Yoon in town? Presidents make trips, but usually they have an agenda. What was his?

SNYDER:
Well, this year is the seventieth anniversary of the U.S.-Korea Alliance, and I think that it was inevitable that they needed to have some kind of big event with the two presidents to acknowledge that anniversary. And so that, I think, was really the opportunity for South Korea to push for some kind of event at the White House. It had to be a big event and they clearly went for the state visit and were successful. And as you noted, this was only the second state visit of the Biden administration, so I think they got a prize that was commensurate with what they felt was appropriate for this particular anniversary demarcation.

LINDSAY:
Well, I imagine that the South Korean delegation had to be happy with what they saw when they arrived in Washington, DC because there were South Korean flags on almost every avenue around the White House.

SNYDER:
Yes. In Washington, it was clear that the Biden administration had prepared well to welcome President Yoon both at the White House and on Capitol Hill. He got a really great reception in addition to a pretty impressive number of site events that really featured various aspects of South Korean accomplishment across the board from pop culture to space, to the potential for doing even more in terms of information technology.

LINDSAY:
Now, as Yoon came to Washington, was he in a strong position back at home? A weak position? Up in the air?

SNYDER:
Well, he's been muddling along in the low thirties in terms of his approval ratings, and so he has shown himself not to be a terribly popular president, and he has also indicated that he is not pursuing foreign policy aims for the purpose of burnishing his popularity. So in that respect-

LINDSAY:
What does that mean?

SNYDER:
Well, it means that he has made the argument that he's going to do what he thinks is the right thing to do regardless of popularity. One of the areas where I think he's demonstrated that most clearly has been his consistent effort to try to improve the South Korean relationship with Japan, which is dramatically politically contested. And of course the relationship with the United States is very positive in South Korea, about 80 percent approval rating for the alliance with the United States, but there have emerged a number of potential fissures that he needed to manage, and he got mixed verdicts in terms of his ability to manage those very well.

LINDSAY:
So talk to me about what those fissures are in the relationship between the United States and South Korea.

SNYDER:
Well, I would argue that there are two major ones and then one that emerged in the framing in the weeks prior to the summit meeting. The one that emerged prior was the issue of U.S. surveillance over conversations between the South Korean National Security Advisor-

LINDSAY:
We were spying on our friends.

SNYDER:
That's basically, yes, that's exactly right.

LINDSAY:
This is from the documents that were posted on various servers by this young twenty-one-year-old Massachusetts Air National Guard member, correct?

SNYDER:
Exactly. But it's awfully hard to celebrate a trust in an alliance when it's just been revealed that you've been spying on your partner. And so that was an issue that I think it came up in the press conference, President Yoon essentially gave an answer that postponed any definitive response on that and suggested that it was discussed. But the two core issues really are related to the credibility of U.S. extended deterrence pledges to defend South Korea, including from increasingly capable and focused threats by the North on the South, and the question of whether or not South Korean firms can get a fair shake in the U.S. economy as South Korean conglomerates have pledged tens, and even $100 billion by some estimates, of inward investment into the United States.

LINDSAY:
Let's take the national security element first. You're talking about the fears that South Korea has of potential abandonment, which is in some ways a shift because it used to be the fear was one of entrapment, that the United States would do something and entangle South Korea in a conflict it did not want to be part of. Now, the fear is that the United States won't come to the aid of South Korea, particularly because of North Korea's growing nuclear program, the whole argument that the United States at the end of the day won't trade San Francisco for Seoul.

Now, President Yoon back in January made news by publicly musing about South Korea getting its own nuclear weapons, one way to solve that issue. I think he kind of walked that back, but what was it that President Yoon asked to President Biden when they met last week?

SNYDER:
Well, what they announced was what was called a Washington Declaration, which featured enhanced planning as related to potential nuclear deterrents. It basically would let South Korea in on essentially what has been a veiled U.S.-only process in the case of defense of the Korean Peninsula, and it would provide South Korea with opportunities for consultation and understanding about how the process works, and also consultation on any potential decision that would be made to use nuclear weapons in response to North Korean nuclear use. And so the trade-off in the negotiation was that South Korea pledged to remain in the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty. And that I think is where it got sensitive. And in fact, I think that what we saw is yes, there have been, especially in the conservative side, fears of abandonment, but there are also fears of entrapment on the conservative side for South Korea.

LINDSAY:
How so?

SNYDER:
Well, the big response from the leading conservative newspaper, Chosun Ilbo, was essentially that the pledge for South Korea to remain in the NPT shackled South Korea from being able to pursue its own nuclear capability. And this suggests that the public debates over whether or not South Korea should pursue an independent nuclear capability... Well, it's not dead, and it also was not assuaged necessarily by this Washington Declaration. Instead, I think the proof is going to be in the pudding in terms of whether or not, and how, this new consultative group is actually organized, and whether or not it really gives South Korea a level of engagement in the process commensurate with what they need.

And the challenge there I think, is that South Korea, especially over the course of the past few months, has experienced increasing levels of acute vulnerability as North Korea has publicly indicated a willingness to use tactical nuclear weapons against South Korea, and in recent weeks has actually shown off punitive warheads that would be mounted on missiles that could be used to strike South Korea. And so this, I think, psychological dimension of the deterrence relationship and the alliance relationship has been front and center and it looks like it's going to continue to be a main focus in terms of the U.S.-ROK alliance relationship.

LINDSAY:
And I should point out that Seoul, a city in its metropolitan area, it's around 25 million people, is not that far from the demilitarized zone, from North Korean territory, so I can certainly understand why this weighs heavily on the mind of the South Korean public. I want to get back to a bit more on the Washington Declaration, but before we do that, maybe you could flesh out for us, Scott, sort of what the public attitude is toward the potential of building an independent South Korean nuclear deterrent. Because it seems to be based on a notion that the only way to deter a nuke is to have a nuke of your own.

But there also would seem to be lots of reasons why South Koreans wouldn't want to go down that road. Only one country has left the NPT, that's North Korea back in 2003, and there are a number of laws in the books in the United States and elsewhere that would lead to economic retaliation against South Korea if it were to develop its own nuclear weapons program.

SNYDER:
Well, if North Korea has that capability and it's making South Korea vulnerable, then the natural impulse is going to be to try to match North Korea. In a way, I like to call it the taxi driver's foreign policy in terms of dealing with North Korea because it's just the intuitively logical end-state of that particular debate. But it also reveals a lot about how South Korea may be feeling toward the United States and the questions of U.S. credibility. And here I think there are a number of factors that have enhanced anxieties in South Korea. One is we're coming off a Trump administration where he was actually encouraging South Korea to go nuclear. And so if there is a Washington Declaration with Biden, it's natural that South Koreans might say, "Oh, well, how long is that going to last?"

Another factor is related to the issue of the age-old debate: would the United States be willing to trade San Francisco for Seoul? Why would the United States make itself vulnerable to North Korean threats of use of nuclear weapons in order to defend South Korea? And so I would argue that in that sense, on the second argument, the Washington Declaration does at least send a symbolic message that we are extending our consultations and our joint action from the traditional conventional realm, which has been defined by a combined forces command to a nuclear dimension that suggests that there would be a joint decision-making process in defense of any potential North Korean threat or use of a nuclear device.

LINDSAY:
Does Russia's invasion of Ukraine play any role in this debate in South Korea domestically, Scott? Because one of the arguments you hear is that Ukraine had nuclear weapons when the Soviet Union broke up, it gave up those nuclear weapons and that made it possible for Russia to invade Ukraine without worrying about Ukraine initiating a nuclear exchange.

SNYDER:
Well, I think that South Koreans are certainly aware of Putin's threats of nuclear use, and it may in some way reinforce the idea that the only real defense against a nuclear capability is to have one of your own. And of course, South Korea is also in a very complicated geostrategic position because there's not only the daily threat from North Korea, but there's increasing awareness that China is a potential adversary and they're also nuclear armed. So if you're a small country, relatively speaking, a relatively weaker power, and you begin to be concerned that your patron or the holder of the nuclear capability may not come to your defense, then I think there is a certain naturalness to the reaction of, "Well, maybe we should try to have one of those on our own."

LINDSAY:
Well, that raises the issue, Scott, that if South Korea were to go nuclear, it has to worry not only about the reaction in the United States, in Western capitals, again, these are countries that have laws that would require them to place sanctions on South Korea, but South Korea would have to worry about how Beijing reacted. And in the past, the Chinese have used economic coercion against South Korea, most notably after South Korea agreed, back was it 2017, to allow the United States to place missile defense batteries in South Korea.

SNYDER:
That's right. I think the biggest cost that people usually point to as related to abandoning the NPT is related to the response from the West, and we have The Glenn Amendment, which would go into force. And it's easy to-

LINDSAY:
And that law has no waivers. And what it would require is, in essence, the United States to see selling weaponry to South Korea, and it would significantly restrict what could be exported to South Korea on the high-tech front.

SNYDER:
That's right, it would be incredibly damaging on both the security front and in terms of South Korea's capacity to continue to play a major export role in the global economy, so there are real costs. What is interesting is that it's not yet clear that the South Korean public has absorbed the scope and extent of those costs. There are some survey questions that have begun to be asked that point to costs, and they drop South Korean support down for the idea of acquiring a nuclear weapon from the high 60s or low 70s to around 50 percent. But of course, the problem is that that's still a majority, and I think there also is an emerging argument among conservatives that there really is no price that is too high to pay for the ability to defend oneself against an existential threat.

LINDSAY:
Yeah, I think that's the issue there: to what extent there is another viable option that you prefer? And you can certainly understand how South Koreans might be reluctant to want to put their trust in another country, which, as you pointed out, just a couple years ago had a president who was quite skeptical of that alliance. I should also note there's the role here played by Russia, which has suggested that if South Korea were to go the nuclear route, they would provide more support for North Korea, which, in essence, could make the problem even worse for South Korea.

SNYDER:
Yes, that's true. And so one of the criticisms that has emerged in the South Korean media related to Yoon's visit has been that these actions of moving closer to the United States are enhancing the likelihood of hostile relations with Russia and China. But I think that what's actually most interesting has been that Kim Yo-jong also weighed in with a pretty strident statement that really focused in on the fact that the leaders publicly mentioned the possibility that nuclear use would result in the end of the regime. That's always a hot button issue for North Korea, but I think that what it tells us is that there's a lot of psychological impact and emotionalism as related to concerns about nuclear confrontation on both sides of the DMZ.

LINDSAY:
Scott, I want to go back to the issue of the Washington Declaration and ask you: to what extent is there anything really new here? Now, I know that Biden has promised to consult with Yoon in the wake of a North Korean attack. The Biden administration is also committed to allowing U.S. ballistic missile submarines to go to South Korean ports. That hasn't happened in a very long time, is my recollection. But President Biden did not agree to place U.S. tactile nuclear warheads on South Korean soil. They were withdrawn from South Korea back in 1991. So was there really a lot new here?

SNYDER:
Well, we have to kind of wait and see. I think there are some things that are new compared to what currently exists, but they may not yet meet South Korean expectations. And of course with South Korean expectations, it's hard to define. I think that what's really notable is that President Yoon clearly doubled down on an alliance-based framework for dealing with this issue as opposed to the critiques that are coming from both left and right. But at the same time, there are a number of options that appear to have been foreclosed by President Biden's statement, and the biggest one, as you pointed out, is the possibility of the return of tactical nuclear weapons to the peninsula. And I think that if you really dig in to a South Korean critique and possible options for reducing their vulnerability, there are actually two things that many conservatives seem to be focused on.

One is the idea that having a U.S. tactical nuclear presence on the peninsula would help to provide balance at the peninsula level with North Korean capabilities. And the other issue is really related to many South Koreans conservatives. Ultimately, we're looking, somehow, for a U.S. endorsement for South Korea to actually go nuclear and to get permission to be able to do that without being in violation of the NPT. But of course, this is a discussion that has only emerged in the last few months. It would probably take years to be able to arrive at that kind of consensus within the alliance. And so some of the expectations, I think, for President Yoon, especially from the conservative side, I think were widely misplaced.

LINDSAY:
Now, I should say that U.S. policy has always been that you do not need a nuke to deter the use of nuclear weapons. U.S. policy is that our response is backed up by the full range of U.S. capabilities, conventional as well as nuclear. And indeed, a lot of thinking has gone into beefing up conventional deterrents on the peninsula. And U.S. officials would say, when you think about the Korean peninsula in this question of trading in San Francisco for Seoul, you have to keep in mind that there is something on the order of 30,000 U.S. troops in South Korea, tens of thousands more dependents, American citizens, business people, so it's a bit more complicated than that.

One of the things I saw coming out of the summit was criticism that Yoon actually exaggerated what it was that President Biden committed to. At least in some translations of what he said in Korean, he seemed to be suggesting that President Biden had committed to using nuclear weapons to respond.

SNYDER:
That's absolutely right, Jim. And it actually occurred I think at two levels. One is at the presidential level where President Yoon made two different statements, one at the press conference, one is his meeting with Secretary of Defense Austin, that suggested a certainty with regards to U.S. nuclear retaliation. And then the other at the advisorial level was a statement by the deputy national security advisor of South Korea who said that the arrangement under the Washington Declaration was "almost like a nuclear sharing arrangement," and National Security Council staff on the U.S. side completely took that off the table as an interpretation.

LINDSAY:
But I take that in that case, South Korean officials are speaking to their domestic publics.

SNYDER:
I think it's clear that they're trying to respond to a domestic political need, and they were running up against the limits of the ability to do that in the context of the alliance agreement.

LINDSAY:
I want to shift gears briefly, Scott, and talk about the second big issue that you flagged when we first began chatting. And this is the concern that South Korea has about this surge of American economic nationalism, the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act, which gives tax credits to countries that meet certain requirements, most notably having a free trade agreement of some sort, and the concern of many South Koreans that this is basically stealing investment and jobs from them. Did we make any progress on that dispute?

SNYDER:
It does not appear that very much progress was made. In advance of the summit, the Department of Commerce interpreted application of the Inflation Reduction Act in such a way that it is possible to lease Hyundai electric vehicles until 2025 and still qualify for some form of tax credits, but you can't yet buy Hyundai vehicles that, until 2025, would be made outside of the United States. And of course in 2025 domestic production here in the U.S. would come online and those vehicles would qualify. So there's that issue, but I think the bigger issue is really related to how South Koreans are seeing U.S. industrial policy as related to interpretations of requirements for subsidies under the Chips and Science Act, and the question of what sorts of data and information the U.S. government is requesting as a condition for receiving those subsidies. And some of that data that is being requested is considered on the South Korean side to be sensitive in ways that would actually compromise competitiveness and future capacity to pursue greater market share. 

And this actually touches on a broader issue that probably has gotten a little bit less attention. Actually, the alliance envisages a much closer technology relationship between the two sides in a whole range of areas. And so I actually think that some of the concerns related to the Chips and Science Act, they're just a small piece of the broader pie that is in play. And if the cooperation mechanisms that are envisaged are realized, it's likely that South Korean firms could be a much larger piece of the U.S. economy puzzle, and therefore generate considerably greater returns than most South Koreans are necessarily seeing when they're thinking about the current U.S.-South Korea relationship.

LINDSAY:
I mean, my sense is, listening to South Korean officials talk about this issue, they're concerned that this is not going to be a win-win approach. It's going to be a win for the United States, a loss for South Korea, and that that's an issue because South Korea has major investments in trading relationship with China that could be put at jeopardy from all of this. And again, particularly when we talk high-end chips, we talk about American technological ingenuity and leadership in this space. South Korea, like the Netherlands and also Japan, is at the forefront and they dominate certain aspects of the industry, and so the United States needs South Korea just as South Korea needs the United States.

SNYDER:
That's right. And there were two sensitive, very concrete issues that I think were on the table as part of the conversation. I don't know if they really were dealt with at the presidential level. One of them is the question of, if the PRC places sanctions on the U.S.-based Micron company in response to U.S. export controls, the U.S. request was that South Korea not backfill and continue to provide semiconductor chips as a measure by which to allow China to get away with those sanctions without feeling any pain. And then the other issue that is out there is really the question of the implementation of those U.S. export controls and their impact on the operations of South Korean factories that are currently in China.

And both of those are directly at issue because actually, as we look at South Korean trade numbers right now over the course of the past seven to eight months, because of the downturn in terms of South Korean semiconductor exports, the South Koreans are now running a trade deficit with China. And so it's clear that the shift in focus of cutting edge technology and South Korean investment toward the United States is having a potentially significant effect in terms of shifting the bilateral trades relationships of China and South Korea, and also of the U.S. and South Korea.

LINDSAY:
Well, that provides a powerful reminder, Scott, that American policymakers, American lawmakers, and the American public have to keep in mind, that if you want to get something, you also have to be prepared to give something. If it is all ask and no give, it can be very difficult to sustain that policy. But I want to shift gears and just close on another issue that's gotten a lot of attention and it's been a political problem for President Yoon back home, and that is the question of South Korea providing military materiel to Ukraine. Or, short of that, providing weapons to the United States or certain countries in Europe as a way of getting around what I take to be South Korea's position that it should not provide arms to active combatants? Sort of walk me through whether we've made any progress on that.

SNYDER:
So this is a very interesting issue. It's really gotten a lot of focus. It was actually the focal point of the leaks because the core issue was the question of whether or not South Korea was going to adjust its policy in order to directly provide arms to the Ukraine.

LINDSAY:
And perhaps provide weapons to Ukraine, sort of through a bit of legerdemain, sort of giving weapons to the Poles or to the United States. So the United States or the Poles could then give weapons to Ukraine and South Korea could say, "Well, we didn't give weapons directly to Ukraine." Probably not a great look for the South Korean government.

SNYDER:
That's right. Here's where it gets complicated. I think that President Yoon in his pivotal state framing of South Korean foreign policy, and in the speech that he just gave before Congress has indicated that he is on the side of freedom and very much empathetic to the plight of Ukraine and the need for weapons, and yet South Korea is not delivering in concrete form at the highest level in support of that pledge. And so it turns out that the South Korean constraint on supplying armaments to active theaters of conflict is really a customary constraint, not a legal constraint.

President Yoon in a Reuters interview prior to coming here provided a potential signal that he is prepared to ease that policy by indicating that if certain conditions existed in terms of human rights violations or other conditions of warfare, that it might be possible that South Korea would shift the policy. Then he gave his speech here on Capitol Hill. So far, the policy itself has not shifted, but it certainly appears that President Yoon has laid the groundwork for being able to shift the policy at some point in the future if he so desires.

LINDSAY:
And it's worth emphasizing that South Korea is a major defense producer and exporter. It has been producing a brand of tank that is very popular around the world because it is both very effective and relatively easy to maintain. So this is a big business in South Korea as well.

SNYDER:
That's right. Tanks, shells, howitzers, all of those items are items that are clearly in demand in Ukraine. South Korean defense manufacturers have already made a lot of contracts with Poland to backfill supplies that have been shipped to Ukraine as well as to the United States.

LINDSAY:
And I should note that South Korea has a very good reason to have a robust defense industry, and that is its neighbor north of the thirty-eighth parallel.

SNYDER:
There's an obvious reason why South Korea may have a lot of stocks that could be available for use in the Ukrainian theater.

LINDSAY:
On that note, I'll close up The President's Inbox for this week. My guest has been Scott Snyder, the senior fellow for Korea Studies and director of the program on U.S.-Korea policy here at the Council. As always, Scott, it was a delight to chat.

SNYDER:
Thanks, Jim. It was great to be here.

LINDSAY:
Please subscribe to The President's Inbox on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen, and leave us a review, we love the feedback. The publications mentioned in this episode and a transcript of our conversation are available on the podcast page for The President's Inbox on cfr.org.

As always, opinions expressed on The President's Inbox are solely those of the host or our guests, not of CFR, which takes no institutional positions on matters of policy. Today's episode was produced by Ester Fang with Director of Podcasting Gabrielle Sierra. Special thanks go out to Michelle Kurilla for her research assistance. This is Jim Lindsay. Thanks for listening.