Curious Case of South Korea: Part 4

Cordial … on the surface

If China is the new global bad guy, as with the Soviet Union, the only real counterweight is the United States.

Yet Koreans are ambivalent about America. You wouldn’t think that if you look at the facile polling the American media likes.

Pew Research shows that in 2019, 77 percent of South Koreans held a “favorable opinion” of the U.S. Pew derives that by asking: “Please tell me if you have a very favorable, somewhat favorable, somewhat unfavorable or very unfavorable opinion of the United States?”

Very favorable plus somewhat favorable equals favorable. You can see this is not very insightful.

Pew may show support that appears a mile wide, but it’s an inch deep.

Note that in 2002, just 52 percent of South Koreans answered favorably about the US. That’s a large “swing vote” that should worry anyone who thinks a South Korea-U.S. alliance is vital for both countries.

We examined more deeply how the past affects South Korean American relations, including the military dictatorships and the Gwanju Massacre. And also put in the perspective the stark alternative - life under the Kims.

But antipathy remains deep rooted.

In his seminal book Anti-Americanism in Democratizing South Korea, David Straub, who served as the head of the political section at the U.S. embassy in Seoul for three years, reveals the troubling trends that could quickly flip polls.

For the young, it’s rooted in the longstanding Korean national narrative of victimization at the hands of great powers. They believe South Korea is the junior partner is the countries’ relations, which rankles South Koreans’ growing nationalism.

The American Army headquarters in downtown Seoul reminds proud younger Koreans of a foreign occupation. Pollution and noise from army bases are viewed as an infringement of national sovereignty. Relations with local women and prostitutes inspires more resentment, as it’s another reminder of Comfort Women. American troops have run over and killed locals and sometimes get involved in other scrapes with Koreans.

These are minor local problems that deserve correction. But they’re turned into major national crisis by South Korea’s sensationalized ad-driven media who have become even more frenzied in the Internet age. (A massive contemporary problem in every democracy)

Moon’s Seoul Mate

As the seeds of the Korea War were planted by the post-World War II division of the Korean peninsula by the US and the Soviet Union, many South Koreans believe that inter-Korean rapprochement and reunification should be controlled by Koreans only – including those from the North.

Polls on North Korea show how changeable South Koreans can be. After his 2018 summit with Moon Jae-in, Kim Jong-un’s approval rating in the South went from 10 percent to 78 percent in six weeks.

Kim handled the PR perfectly. And it’s easy to understand why Koreans would love to have a reunified country.

It’s also mind-boggling to think anyone could look at the Kim regime and think that the Kims would accept that reunification under anything other than their rule. Do South Koreans really think Kim Jong-un will agree to become governor of Pyongyang and face elections?

Pew polls also don’t show which political party contains those who don’t like America. In South Korea most of that anti-American sentiment is on the left, making it a concentrated political force that’s “just an election away.”

And it sits waiting to be exploited by politicians like current president Moon Jae-in. Moon is typical of the Korean left.

He rose to prominence as a human rights lawyer and activist. He was jailed for opposing the long-running military dictatorship, which gave way in 1987 only in response to mass demonstrations by Koreans demanding elections. In 2002, he helped elect Roh Moo-hyun, who won a narrow victory in the midst of surging anti-American sentiment. Roh stood out among South Korean presidents for his hostility toward U.S. policy. Moon became Roh’s chief of staff. Note this was when American favorability in South Korea polled at 52%.

Moon’s views are no secret. He started as an opponent of the THAAD anti-missile system, which has been deployed in South Korea despite China’s angry opposition (more on China’s reaction here). What changed his mind were several North Korean missile tests. But, he’s not a fan of a bigger American presence in South Korea.

He also urged revival of the so-called Sunshine Policy, which sought to win North Korea’s friendship with aid and commerce. He promoted the idea of an “economic community” with the North, and urged talks with North Korea’s Kim Jong-un, endorsed revival of the Six-Party talks (which include Japan, Russia, and China).

What does engagement and economic interconnection really mean?

In 2000, President Kim Dae-jung’s historic “Sunshine” trip north to meet Kim Jong-il was bought with a half billion dollars in payments from Hyundai and the South Korean government to the Kims. That bought the North a lot of missiles.

Sometimes symbolism tells you everything.

In August 2015, South Korean Army Staff Sergeant Ha Jae-hyun lost both his legs to a North Korean mine while on patrol along the DMZ. Initially, Ha was honorably discharged and designated as a “wounded warrior” for injuries stemming from war or combat-like duties.

But in September 2019, the South Korean Veterans Administration ruled that Ha was not a wounded warrior. It soon came out that the Veterans Administration’s Moon-appointed director believed that Ha should not receive such a designation because doing so would damage inter-Korean ties. In the end, Moon corrected this with a presidential directive. But only after a massive public outcry.

These are the leftists who make-up Moon’s political party. And they just won an unprecedented legislative victory, making them flush with political capital.

That will have ramifications because in his unique style American President Donald Trump is rattling US-South Korean relations. The ongoing battle over defense-cost sharing underscores the illusions of both sides.

The United States and South Korea failed to reach a defense cost-sharing deal in the Spring, meaning 4,000 South Korean employees at U.S. military bases went on unpaid leave because funds ran out. The two sides are deadlocked over U.S. demands that South Korea sharply increase the amount it pays to offset the costs for stationing American troops in the country.

Trump demands a fivefold increase to about $5 billion per year, although U.S. negotiators have said they reduced that demand to an unannounced amount.

Seoul, meanwhile, is believed to have offered to go as high as 10 percent. South Korea’s budget for this year is US$422 billion, of which US$41.3 billion is for defense.

Seoul argues it also covers other costs, including by providing rent-free land for U.S. bases and by shouldering more than 90 percent of the nearly $11 billion cost of upgrading the major US base at Camp Humphreys in Pyeongtaek.

Additionally, South Korea already allocates around 2.5 percent of its gross domestic product for defense spending and imported $6.2 billion in arms from the United States, the fourth largest total worldwide.

But the friction is about more than just money.

For the past several years, the United States has implemented a rotational force concept whereby U.S. troops are sent on short-term deployments. The Pentagon plans to implement division-strength rotations including the “South China Sea and surrounding areas, to expand the Army’s presence in containing a resurgent China and multiply forces in a hard-to-reach area.”

Washington wants South Korea to pay for relocating U.S. forces to and from these hard to reach areas from South Korea. Moon has balked at assuming the cost of rotating U.S. forces.

He says it weakens the argument that American forces deployed in South Korea deter North Korea rather than assuming more regional missions such as deterring Chinese forces. He says such a move would also significantly decrease support among his party in the National Assembly for increasing South Korea’s share of common defense costs.

This goes to South Korean leftist naiveté. As we’ve explored in Part 2, the South could handle North Korea on its own. China is the growing threat. And perhaps an existential one.

For both sides, every dollar they save is a dollar they have to spend somewhere else.

The U.S. has its own political problems. One of which is it’s running almost $1 trillion budget deficits and has an accumulated debt of almost $23 trillion.

Whether he specifically knows it or not, Trump is the first American President to genuinely question Alfred Thayer Mahan’s 100 year foundation of America’s national security: the United States can be threatened only by an enemy naval force that could both invade its territory and curb its access to the oceans. The most likely place for that enemy to come from is Eurasia. Trump seems to believe that it would be hard for any country to pull off a Eurasian empire in a way that can genuinely threaten the U.S. So paying trillions to stop that is a waste.

Lots of Americans agree with Trump that the threat is exaggerated and they money is better spent on schools in South Carolina than military bases in South Korea.

The problem for South Korea is if that’s wrong, it’s among the first countries to fall. Think Poland in 1939.

If you’re South Korean, that means your country has no greater national security concern than keeping Washington very, very close. Anything else fundamentally misunderstands the threat matrix and the nature of the Chinese Communist Party.

The same recognition should give Seoul more impetus to repair its tortured relationship with Japan, which is not the Japan that occupied Korea for 35 years.

We’ll consider that next.