As South Korea’s leader meets Trump, China looms large
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South Korean President Lee Jae Myung will put his balancing act to the test when he meets US President Donald Trump on Aug 25.
PHOTO: REUTERS
Choe Sang-hun
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SEOUL – During 2025’s South Korean election campaign, Mr Lee Jae Myung said he would crawl between US President Donald Trump’s legs, if necessary, to protect his country’s national interests. But he also said: “I am not a pushover, either.”
Mr Lee, who is now South Korea President, will put that balancing act to the test on Aug 25 when he and Mr Trump meet for the first time in Washington.
The two leaders have a lot in common. Both survived assassination attempts before taking office. Both share an interest in meeting with North Korea’s leader
But their priorities diverge when it comes to the seven-decade-old alliance between their countries – especially over a potential conflict between China and Taiwan, which Beijing claims as its own.
Tens of thousands of US troops have long been stationed in South Korea to deter North Korea, which has nuclear arms.
But the Trump administration is demanding that Seoul take greater responsibility for its own defence, as Washington expands the role of its troops based in South Korea to help contain China.
South Korea fears that this “strategic flexibility”, as the United States calls it, could leave it more vulnerable to the North and increase the chances of the South getting sucked into a war over Taiwan.
Seoul and Washington should ensure that strategic flexibility “will not undermine South Korea’s security” and the allies’ combined abilities to deter North Korea, Mr Lee’s national security adviser, Mr Wi Sung-lac, told reporters on Aug 22.
The allies have found some common ground over that principle, Mr Wi said. But officials were also wary of Mr Trump’s unpredictability.
“If the President somehow feels that he needs to elicit some more public statements from Lee Jae Myung as a partner in countering the Chinese economic and military threat, that might put President Lee in a position that would take him beyond his current talking points,” Mr Sydney Seiler, a Korea expert at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, said during an online panel discussion last week.
Officials in Seoul are also concerned that if China invades Taiwan and the US uses its forces in South Korea to defend Taiwan, China and North Korea could open another military conflict on the Korean peninsula.
Similar concerns were behind a 2006 joint statement in which the US agreed to respect South Korea’s position that “it shall not be involved in a regional conflict in North-east Asia against the will of the Korean people”.
Only then did South Korea agree to respect “the necessity for strategic flexibility” of the US forces in South Korea.
But that was before the US saw China as its biggest security threat and made defending Taiwan from Chinese aggression a priority.
In recent weeks, some policy analysts in Washington have suggested the US military should drastically reduce its presence in South Korea because it cannot freely use its bases there to fight a war elsewhere.
If South Korea resists Washington’s demand on strategic flexibility, “the United States can simply relocate key components of its forces in South Korea to another region where it will face less constraint in sending them into a Taiwan contingency”, said Mr Chun Yung-woo, a former South Korean presidential adviser for diplomacy and national security.
In August, General Xavier Brunson, the top US military commander in South Korea, said it should not be considered a foregone conclusion that the US would want South Korea to join in a conflict between Taiwan and China.
But “what’s being asked of Korea is to be stronger” against North Korea so that the US military might be able to “do other things”, Gen Brunson told reporters at the US base in Pyeongtaek.
South Korean President Lee Jae Myung (left) and Japan PM Shigeru Ishiba shaking hands on Aug 23 in Tokyo, where they agreed to improve bilateral ties.
PHOTO: EPA
On his way to the US, Mr Lee made a stopover in Tokyo and met Japan Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba. In a nod to Washington, Mr Lee and Mr Ishiba agreed to improve bilateral ties
They also compared notes on an overlapping set of challenges, including Mr Trump’s high tariffs and his pressure on US allies to increase their military spending.
Seoul and Washington have yet to hash out the details of the broad-stroke trade deal they agreed to in July.
Mr Trump agreed to lower his tariffs on South Korea’s exports, like Samsung phones and Hyundai cars, to 15 per cent in return for a US$350 billion (S$448.5 billion) investment package from the country.
He has also said that South Korea should increase its annual contribution to the upkeep of the US troops on its soil to US$10 billion, more than nine times the current level.
These demands have some South Koreans wondering if it would be better to try to defend their country without US troops.
In recent years, surveys have shown that a majority of citizens want South Korea to build its own nuclear weapons instead of relying on the US for protection. NYTIMES
