On April 27, President Donald Trump said that South Korea should pay for the cost of the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense anti-missile system and that he intends to renegotiate or terminate the US-South Korea free trade agreement.
A few days later he said that he would be honored to meet Kim Jong-un, praising him as a man who is quite smart. Trump may continue to demand that South Korea share more burden militarily and economically. His North Korea policy may also confuse all parties directly involved in the Korean conflict.
In light of such factors, South Koreans are confused and disappointed. They wonder whether the US will remain their most trusted ally and whether South Korea should review its security structure that it has maintained since the Korean War. Now is the time to review the 64-year-old South Korea-US alliance.
First, the ROK-US alliance is a mutual defense system in which South Korea and the US are responsible for defending each other in contrast with the US-Japan alliance, in which the US is unilaterally responsible for defending Japan. Therefore, the US can ask South Korean forces to come to the aid of US troops.
Second, unlike the NATO treaty the South Korea-US treaty has no clause of automatic involvement in defense of each other and requires the approval of the legislative body of each party. Therefore, the US can refuse to participate in a conflict in Korea.
Third, Korean troops are not required to be stationed in US territory while US troops are entitled to be stationed in Korea. Therefore, it would be much more difficult for South Korea to order American troops to leave South Korea than for the US to withdraw its troops from South Korea, unless the mutual defense treaty is amended.
The US can use all these provisions as leverage if it wants to request that South Korea make more financial contributions for the US troops and military installations in Korea, or revise the alliance treaty and the status of forces agreement.
The best way to handle these situations is to build a self-sufficient military force which all the previous Korean governments have pledged but neglected or failed to do. A self-sufficient military force is a military force that can defeat the North Korean forces without the support of US conventional forces.
At the same time, the Combined Forces Command and the war-time operational control by the US commander should be abolished. This self-sufficient force should also be equipped with its own independent missile defense capabilities against North Korea’s nuclear forces while the US provides a nuclear umbrella because North Korea has anti-ballistic missiles as well as nuclear weaponry and ballistic missile systems.
Furthermore, a more serious issue between the US and South Korea is anti-Americanism in South Korea and anti-South Korean sentiment in the US.
Public opinion in South Korea on US-South Korean relations has changed from predominantly pro-American to less pro-American. Until the military dictatorships in the South were over in 1993, the sources of anti-Americanism had been America’s support or neutral attitude toward military dictatorships and American soldiers’ misbehavior. During the period of military dictatorships, the youth, particularly college students, became anti-American and condemned US imperialism, using the usual communist rhetoric. But an absolute majority of South Koreans, except the extreme leftists and pro-North Koreans, have remained pro-American.
As South Korea has surpassed North Korea economically, South Korea’s military forces have become more and more self-sufficient and have been seeking complete independence from the US-ROK Combined Forces Command.
However, the general public still supports the alliance. Around 35 percent of people surveyed in 2005, during the Roh Moo-hyun liberal government, and 42.9 percent of them in 2015, during the Park Geun-hye conservative government, favored a “further” strengthening of the alliance.
An overwhelming majority of South Koreans (70.4 percent in March 2016) believes that the US is more important for South Korean national security than China (21.0 percent), Russia (1.6 percent) and Japan (0.9 percent).
Americans also support the American military bases in South Korea, with 64 percent of them saying so in a survey in 2014. Close to half of them support the US troops defending South Korea, with 47 percent of them saying so in a survey in 2015.
As mentioned above, the US Congress has the power to declare war. Therefore, the Congress is less likely to support US participation in another Korean conflict if an absolute majority of the people objects to the US participation.
More important is the rationale for the necessity of the South Korea-US alliance for South Korea and the US.
Since the South-North Korea non-aggression agreement in 1992, North Korea has constantly called for a US-North Korea peace treaty. After the North Korean nuclear program became a key issue between North Korea and the US, North Korea has continuously demanded the US-North Korea peace treaty as in return for the denuclearization of North Korea.
Its objective is to undermine, if not to destroy, the US-South Korea alliance. But it could be acceptable to the US and South Korea on the conditions that North Korea ends its nuclear and missile programs and the US-South Korea alliance is slightly revised, while North Korea maintains the China-North Korea alliance.
Under a revised US-South Korea alliance, the US should not maintain ground troops and any kind of anti-ballistic missile system in South Korea.
Both the US and South Korea could benefit from a revised alliance. They could use the southern triangle (the US-Japan-South Korea coalition) against the northern triangle (the China-Russia-North Korea coalition). Both would be able contain China’s domination of Northeast Asia. As long as China supports North Korea, they cannot but check China.
Additionally, the US could use South Korea to demonstrate its global leadership in democracy and the reliability of its alliance commitments.
The first things the new president should do are to denuclearize North Korea and restructure the Korean-American alliance.
By Park Sang-seek
Park Sang-seek is a former rector, the Graduate Institute of Peace Studies, Kyung Hee University. -- Ed.