Yoon’s gamble with ideology undercuts democracy and ignites inter-Korean tensions

Author: Stephen Costello, George Washington University

During 2023, South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol sought to deepen contacts with Japan, the United States and other like-minded countries, while paying less attention to authoritarian neighbours like China, Russia and North Korea. This has resulted in warmer personal relations with Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and US President Joe Biden, and increasing frictions with Chinese President Xi Jinping, Russian President Vladimir Putin and North Korean President Kim Jong Un.

South Korea’s indirect transfer of artillery shells to Ukraine will negatively impact its relations with Russia. Its neglect of dialogue with North Korea, expanded military cooperation and exercises with the United States and efforts to ‘de-risk’ from China will complicate relations with Xi. Seoul’s anti-North Korea rhetoric and acts to cancel the 2018 North–South military agreement have raised tensions on the peninsula and provoked harsh rebukes from Pyongyang.

President Yoon, now in the second year of his single five-year term, has enflamed ongoing tensions between conservatives and progressives. By provoking a debate over national identity, Yoon has affected domestic and foreign policies. Overall, Seoul has emphasised ideology over strategy, negatively impacting its power and influence.

In this political and social environment, next year’s National Assembly elections on 10 April 2024 could further reduce the power of the president and his People Power Party. But even with reduced power, President Yoon’s foreign policies are unlikely to change in the next three years due to his political, diplomatic and institutional inexperience.

Most of the administration’s efforts during this time will be dedicated to handling the consequences of this year’s policy choices.

South Korea’s identity has been grounded since at least the first progressive government in 1998 in a relatively bloodless transition from dictatorial to authoritarian to democratic governance. This national identity has taken hold with a generation of South Koreans, even while pre-democratic and undemocratic elements lingered. Now, the administration has reduced support for democratic institutions at home and for diplomacy based on national interests abroad. The broad institutional attacks at home have met with furious pushback from the from the democratic opposition, women, teachers, union leaders, journalists and others.

As former US Ambassador Donald Gregg used to say, South Korea has more non-military power to impact the region than any of its neighbours. Its core national interests have been to act as the stronger party to its northern neighbour and pursue mutually beneficial engagement, as well as to lead Japan and China to support inter-Korean rapprochement and to secure US backing for Korea-and-Japan-led economic integration that enhances security.

During 2023, the striking feature of Seoul’s foreign policy has been the lack of attention to diplomatic solutions to festering problems. The Yoon administration has denied the utility of previous efforts at engagement with North Korea. The president has reversed the policies of the Moon years, provoking inter-Korean instability and driving North Korea into closer cooperation with Russia and China.

The experienced cadre of former government officials and policy specialists in Seoul stress that a more realistic and practical direction for security policy would begin with engagement with North Korea.

Previous administrations have made agreements that cap nuclear and missile programs while securing enhanced stability and economic development, among them the 1992 Joint Declaration of the Denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula and the 1994 Agreed Framework between the United States and North Korea.

The June 2000 summit between North and South Korea immediately established new understandings between the two, and pointed the way to careful cooperation well short of ‘unification’. South Korean efforts to return to these understandings from 2017 to 2019 were largely successful.

Seoul’s second central concern is the alliance relationship with the United States. Yoon and his government have fully embraced the ‘sanctions-and-pressure without diplomacy’ approach to North Korea, aligning South Korea with over two decades of US efforts. Seoul and Washington have tried to substitute economic, trade and military cooperation for progress on issues with North Korea, but their alliance remains anchored to those issues. And it is limited by them because they impact everything else.

Yoon’s decision to ignore Seoul’s responsibility for stability in the Korean peninsula has meant that he has little leverage with Washington. Without diplomacy, joint US-South Korean military exercises, new missiles and multiple new military consultations are expected to raise, not lower, tensions.

During 2023, Korea focused its cooperation with its regional neighbours on military enhancements and trade agreements that conform to the ‘China delinking and containment’ agenda set by the United States. This simplified Korean diplomatic activity by lining it up with the White House’s preferences.

With Japan, Yoon set aside South Korea’s strategic regional interests in order to achieve a shallow boost in relations with Prime Minister Kishida. Regional arms control and South Korea-led East Asia security and economic cooperation were ignored. At the same time, this approach avoided the necessary discussions with its neighbours about how to cap and roll back North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs in a way that reduces regional threats and improves security.

Without a realistic diplomatic approach, the Yoon administration has used its first year on tactics and rhetoric that have increased threats and put off North Korea’s denuclearisation. Seoul’s ability to act as a regional leader, centred on its unique ability to successfully engage North Korea, will now have to wait at least until there is a different leadership in Seoul.

This is unfortunate, because there is a crying need for region-based new thinking on the most important questions facing East Asian governments.

Stephen Costello is a Visiting Scholar at the Institute for Korean Studies, George Washington University, Washington DC. He is formerly director of the Korea program at the Atlantic Council and director of the Kim Dae-Jung Peace Foundation.

This article is part of an EAF special feature series on 2023 in review and the year ahead.

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