The Trump Administration has made the North Korean nuclear and missile threats a national security priority and has called on its regional allies to bring additional pressure on North Korea to bring it back to negotiations. At the recent summit between U.S. President Donald Trump and South Korean President Moon Jae-in June 29 and 30, Trump emphasized his commitment to a new, proactive approach to North Korea in a White House Rose Garden press conference. "We're working closely with South Korea and Japan, as well as partners around the world, on a range of diplomatic, security and economic measures to protect our allies and our own citizens from this menace known as North Korea," he said. Although North Korea remains a top priority in the U.S.-South Korea bilateral relationship, disagreements over trade, the controversial THAAD missile defense system, and basing U.S. troops in South Korea could undermine cooperation. The Cipher Brief’s Will Edwards spoke to Sung-yoon Lee, a professor at the Fletcher School for International Affairs at Tufts University to learn more about the first meeting between Trump and Moon.
The Cipher Brief: Broadly speaking, the U.S. and South Korea have the same goal for North Korea, denuclearization, and have outlined a phased approach. Can you describe this phased approach and highlight any differences or sticking points in either the South Korean or U.S. position in pursuing this goal?
Sung-yoon Lee: Moon Jae-in as you may know is a known entity in South Korean politics. He was the chief of staff of the former South Korean President Roh Mu-hyun, so he’s very experienced in government. The Roh Administration pursued a policy of generous engagement and unconditional aid to North Korea. Moon Jae-in is a proponent of returning to that kind of policy. I don’t think it worked and it won’t work now, especially on the verge of a North Korean nuclear breakout.
The Trump Administration has been skeptical because of Moon’s position on North Korea and in recent weeks there have been some unfortunate signals coming out of South Korea which exacerbated the underlying tension between the two governments. For example, on the issue of THAAD, Moon Jae-in has long opposed it. During his campaign he said he would reverse it, send it back, and I think he has some justifiable grievances because the former South Korean government and the Trump Administration rushed through the deployment of THAAD, because they knew that it would be harder for Moon to reverse it once the missile defense system was already in place in South Korea. He takes that as a personal insult, I think. Moon has ordered an environmental review, and I think this is a ruse, an excuse to buy time to forestall the complete deployment of THAAD.
Moon Jae-in has another Moon—Professor Moon [Chung-in] —who is an academic and special advisor to the president who two weeks ago at the Wilson Center in [Washington,] DC, said a lot of unsettling things. He said that President Moon’s policy is that in return for North Korea’s temporary halt to nuclear weapons tests, South Korea would be amenable to downgrading the alliance. What he said in fact was scaling down U.S. strategic assets stationed in the peninsula and also scaling down combined military drills between the U.S. and South Korea. On the surface that looks like a reasonable proposal, but it’s absurd on many levels in my opinion because North Korea is prohibited pursuant to multiple UN Security Council resolutions from developing and testing nukes and missiles. For the new South Korean government to say “in return for not killing your neighbor or doing illegal things, we’ll downgrade the alliance,” that will not sit well with the U.S. that values the so-called America First policy.
President Moon did a lot of damage control in the ensuing days after Professor Moon’s unfortunate remarks. For the first time, he gave an interview with CBS and the Washington Post trying to send out the signal that he’s pro-U.S., that he won’t rush into negotiating with North Korea without U.S. support and so on. But in the end what Moon has been calling for is getting North Korea to freeze its nuclear and missile programs and ultimately dismantle and denuclearize North Korea, so he’s saying let’s talk once North Korea agrees to a freeze.
The Trump Administration’s view is let’s talk once North Korea takes credible action to dismantle its nuclear weapons. So the bars set for return to negotiations are quite different. I’m getting ahead of myself, but having watched the joint press release and following the news, as I expected, I think it was a very frosty, very tense discussion [June 30] between the two leaders.
TCB: Do you think that was over the North Korea issue, do you think that was because of the trade issue, or both?
Lee: [President Donald] Trump, of course, has a political agenda and incentive to be faithful to his campaign rhetoric and raise the trade deficit and other issues. But the U.S. trade deficit with South Korea is not insignificant but kind of small compared to the deficit with Japan or China. With China it’s like $150 billion. With South Korea its approximately $15 billion. I don’t want to say that’s negligible, but it’s not that serious. North Korea is far more serious. During the joint press conference in the Rose Garden, Trump said that South Korea must give reciprocal access to American auto companies and South Korea must stop exporting Chinese steel to the United States. He also went very specific and said since the free-trade agreement was signed in 2011, the U.S. trade deficit to South Korea has increased by $11 billion. And, again, that is a lot of money, but it’s taken out of context.
My point here is had the more important issues like North Korea, THAAD, been agreeably settled, I don’t think Trump would have been so discourteous as to put the visiting South Korean leader on the spot right next to him and say all of this in an immoderate tone. He sounded angry.
I suspected this would be a tense summit meeting and I’m convinced now, not having been there myself, of course, but I’m convinced that it was because of the way Trump said it – “The U.S. will always defend its allies and its citizens. Always,” in sort of an angry tone. So the atmospherics of this press conference were not very cordial, and Trump’s body language suggested that this was an unhappy business transaction. He had to meet the South Korean leader and host a dinner that was scheduled between 6:00 and 7:30. Just allocating 90 minutes to a key ally suggested that Trump was sending a message that this is all business in contrast to the way that Trump hosted Prime Minister Abe of Japan or President Xi Jinping, it was markedly different. The body language today, I have to say it was unwelcoming.
TCB: In his Rose Garden statement he also mentioned the burden-sharing of stationing U.S. troops, and I was curious if you had any insight on what the terms might be?
Lee: You could spin it in very different ways. You could say Trump is ignorant and he doesn’t know what he is talking about and it was an innocent mistake. I don’t take that view. For a U.S. president to say that with the South Korean leader right next to him in public, it’s showing a petulant side of Trump but also showing deep, real fissures in the relationship. South Korea certainly could increase its share of covering the cost of U.S. troops in South Korea. Japan does more, so compared to Japan South Korea comes across as stingy, but South Korea’s burden-sharing is respectable. And the U.S. can always renegotiate this and get South Korea to pay up more, and I think South Korea would support that. But, this is not the time or place to make that point forcefully, giving off the impression that South Korea is stingy, so that is another sort of rebuke to the South Korean president.
The proper time and place for that is according to schedule. The U.S. and South Korea will start negotiations on this next year. It’s not an imminent issue compared to North Korea, compared to THAAD, or North Korean human rights violations. It’s not that big of a deal, and for Trump to bring it up and embarrass the South Korean leader sends a message to South Korea.
TCB: The press release mentioned renegotiating the U.S.- Korea Free Trade Agreement. Do we have any details on the terms the U.S. is driving for and what the South Korean reaction to that is?
Lee: In just broad outlines, the U.S. wants South Korea to buy more American cars, and there are tariffs on the import of U.S. cars, but the main problem as far as I can tell is that South Korea makes cheaper, dependable cars, Hyundai and Kia and so on, and American cars are just not very popular. I think that’s Trump speaking to a domestic constituency. Also, South Korea enjoys a trade surplus, but when it comes to services, I think the U.S. enjoys a small surplus. It’s not grossly unbalanced, although it’s Trump’s right to raise this issue, but again it’s another marginal matter in the grand scheme of things because the North Korean threat is so serious and it’s President Moon’s very different approach to North Korea that I think irks Trump as well as his advisors.
Moon has been working too hard to placate North Korea this year. North Korea has tested missiles on at least a dozen occasions and Moon has never said anything that North Korea would be opposed to. He said that we’ll take a stern stance against North Korea’s threat, but we need dialogue. There’s been no penalty, even rhetorical condemnation, coming out of President Moon. I would think the Trump Administration officials are keeping tabs on all these developments and are likely to take the view that President Moon is perhaps not the most reliable ally at this point.
TCB: Has anything surprised you about the summit?
Lee: It seems to have unfolded the way I thought. The reasons are there were many signs that this would be a testy first meeting, but it’s not unprecedented. In the past, there were worse summit meetings between the U.S. leader and the South Korean leader.
These moments of underlying tension are not unprecedented and things could improve, they will improve, but this first meeting was an occasion for Trump to strike a hardline pose and send a stern message, and in that context I think Moon will leave with mixed feelings. I just hope he doesn’t try to rouse up anti-U.S. sentiment in South Korea once he returns home.
If news gets around that Trump was uncouth or unwelcoming, then it could lead to demonstrations against the U.S. and give momentum to the anti-THAAD protest movement.
