On May 9, Moon Jae-in was elected as the new President of South Korea after six months of political turmoil and a power vacuum caused by Park Geun-hye’s impeachment scandal. This is a return of nationalistic and progressive leadership after the past two conservative administrations, and Moon’s landslide victory indicates how strongly the Korean electorate desired a total reform of the country.
Moon’s political career cannot be explained without mentioning Roh Moo-hyun, the liberal President who ranked the highest in terms of favorability (not approval rating) among Korean presidents. As is widely known, Moon served as the last chief of staff to then-President, and his old friend, Roh Moo-hyun.
Washington’s policy experts however, may not think Roh was the most favorable president to America. It is paradoxical that his years are still remembered as traumatic by many experts and policymakers who have dedicated their careers to the ROK-U.S. alliance, although Roh did make major decisions that contributed to the alliance. In spite of controversies among the Korean public, Roh decided to dispatch the army’s Zaytun Division in Iraq for peacekeeping operations, and this unit was the third-largest foreign military presence in Iraq throughout 2005, after those of the United States and the United Kingdom. Roh also pursued and concluded the South Korea-U.S. free-trade agreement, the second-largest U.S. free-trade agreement by market size, after NAFTA, which was ratified later in 2011, during the Lee Myung-bak Administration.
Nonetheless, even now, Washington experts remember the Roh era as one of the most difficult times for the alliance. What actually did matter was the lack of compatibility between the White House and South Korea’s Blue House. There was clear dissonance between Roh and former President George W. Bush, especially in terms of their ideologies and approaches to North Korea, which made managing the alliance difficult, regardless of positive results.
When Moon consistently earned the highest approval rating among major presidential candidates before the election, and was widely expected to win, many Washington experts naturally recalled Roh and cautiously expressed their concerns. They were worried about possible renewed friction between Washington and Seoul, as occurred a decade ago, because they saw Moon simply as Roh’s ideological successor, who looked unlikely to get along with President Donald Trump, an outspoken advocate of “America First.”
These concerns spread in Seoul too when Trump made some unexpected remarks. He harshly criticized the current bilateral FTA and his Administration now wants to review and reform the agreement, which caused anxieties among Korean businesses. Furthermore, Trump said South Korea should pay for the $1 billion THAAD missile defense system, almost 10 days before the presidential election, and it caused another round of criticism in Korea. From many Koreans’ point of view, THAAD has been understood as a defensive radar system for detecting and targeting ICBMs or long-range missiles, which are less likely to be a direct or imminent threat to the Korean people than North Korea’s large arsenal of short-range artillery and rocket launchers. After the Park Administration’s abrupt decision on the deployment, backlash from Seongju County where the system is based became increasingly angry, and Chinese economic retaliation hurt Korean business in China and Korea, which increased skepticism about THAAD. Trump’s remark was not part of the original deal, further increasing criticism of the THAAD deployment. Moon also showed ambivalence toward THAAD during his campaign. Meanwhile, his campaign remarks on possible inter-Korean dialogue and a visit to Pyongyang agitated the audience in Washington. The period before Moon’s inauguration was certainly worrisome to experts.
However, after he took over the Blue House, his action for the alliance was prompt and proactive. He sent his special envoy Hong Seok-hyun, who served as a chairman of JoongAng Media Network (which used to be known as a major conservative mass media company in Korea) and had served as an ambassador to Washington in 2005. Hong met Trump as well as key officials, including Vice President Mike Pence, National Security Advisor H. R. McMaster, and Senior Advisor Jared Kushner, meetings seen as an important icebreaker by both American and Korean experts. Moon is now expected to visit Washington for his first summit with Trump in late June.
In addition, Moon appointed Chung Eui-yong, a career diplomat and trade expert as his top national security advisor. He also nominated Kang Kyung-wha, now a special policy adviser to the UN Secretary-General António Guterres and the highest ranked Korean woman in the UN, as Foreign Affairs Minister. Both are veterans in international relations, indicating that the Moon Administration approach to international affairs – including the alliance – is likely to be more pragmatic rather than ideological.
The South Korea-U.S. alliance has evolved from an asymmetric relationship existing for defense purposes into a comprehensive system with interconnected networks and common political and economic interests. From time to time, alliance management has faced serious challenges from both sides, but this unique relationship will keep working with new leadership in Washington and Seoul as it has in past decades.
