Commentary: South Korea’s tightrope walk between China and the US

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BUSAN: The recent Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit, hosted in South Korea, has been widely considered a success.

United States President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping met for the first time in Mr Trump’s second term, during which they agreed to partially roll back this year’s trade war. South Korean President Lee Jae-myung also had bilateral meetings with Mr Trump and with Japan’s new prime minister, Sanae Takaichi.

It was an effective balancing of the many pressures on South Korea, given its geographic position in the heart of tense Northeast Asia. South Korea has sought for years to avoid being forced to choose between the US and China. South Korea is a treaty ally of America, but China is its biggest export market, a potentially disruptive neighbour and North Korea’s primary geopolitical backer.

AVOIDING A DECISION FORK

Being forced to choose one superpower over the other, the US or China, is Seoul’s biggest grand strategy headache. If South Korea had no choice – if it were forced to choose by a Sino-American war, for example – it would likely choose America. But that would antagonise China, and if the US were to ever retrench from East Asia, South Korea would be left exposed to a large, angry China.

To forestall this outcome, Mr Lee, as a presidential candidate earlier this year, said that South Korea should not participate in a regional conflict over Taiwan. That provoked a sharp backlash in the US, and Mr Lee has been trying to navigate these rocky shoals ever since.

He has done a remarkable job. By not overtly committing to the US, he has mollified China enough to retain some manoeuvring room for South Korea. 

Japan, by contrast, has less room because it is publicly aligned with the US on Taiwan. In 2021, a joint statement by then Japan Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga and US President Joe Biden reaffirmed “the importance of peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait”. Sino-Japanese relations are unsurprisingly tense.

WHAT SOUTH KOREA CAN GET FROM CHINA

As a liberal democracy, South Korea is ideologically more compatible with US alignment. The South Korean public strongly supports the US alliance and is fairly hostile to China. Mr Lee has contested this anti-China drift, and Mr Xi “rewarded” him at APEC by vowing to strengthen economic cooperation.

But the larger question is whether Mr Xi is prepared to make strategic, rather than minor economic concessions to South Korea in order to keep it less aligned with the US than Japan or Taiwan are.

The big strategic issue in Sino-South Korean relations is, unsurprisingly, North Korea. If Mr Xi really wants to pull South Korea away from a US-Japan-Taiwan bloc, the best thing he could do is help rein in North Korea. 

Chinese pundits and officials often claim that China can do little to alter North Korea’s behaviour or slow its march toward nuclear missiles. This is wrong. China could do a lot, and behind the scenes, the Lee government is likely pressing for this.

More than 90 per cent of North Korea’s trade goes through China. North Korea’s elite, including the family of dictator Kim Jong-Un, keeps foreign currency, which they use to import sanctioned goods, in Chinese banks.

North Korea is under heavy United Nations sanctions for its nuclear weapons programme, yet China has dragged its feet on sanctions enforcement for years. Illicit materials are transshipped through China, and Beijing makes no effort to surveil North Korean waters to prevent illegal ship-to-ship transfers. Indeed, Chinese black-market actors are complicit in sanctions-busting.

So China could help a lot. It could vote for more sanctions on North Korea at the UN. It could seal the border and go after Chinese criminal groups who operate with North Korean agents. It could pursue North Korean monies and publicly denounce Pyongyang for its regular missile tests. A major payoff like this would justify Seoul’s regional restraint.

WILL SOUTH KOREA HAVE TO CHOOSE AT SOME POINT?

Acting as a bridge between the US and China has long been a goal of South Korea’s progressive party. Mr Lee is of that party. But this balancing act faces opposition from the country’s hawkish conservatives and from public opinion, which increasingly sees China as a regional bully.

Mr Lee can make the commonsense argument that China is a permanent, immovable neighbour with whom South Korea must find a working accommodation. But this will become a harder argument to make if Mr Xi does not help with North Korea and continues China’s belligerent regional course.

There is much anxiety in the US now that China will attack Taiwan sometime in the next decade. American foreign policy has turned hawkish on China, and the Trump administration has sounded a tough line on China and Taiwan.

If China does move against Taiwan, it will likely spark a major regional conflict. South Korea is home to multiple US military bases and dozens of strike aircraft. The US would seek to use those against China in a conflict, regardless of the South Korean government’s approval.

At that point, South Korea would have to choose: conflict with China, or end the US alliance and stand alone in the region. South Korea’s conservatives would likely choose the former, but it is not clear what Mr Lee would choose.

Robert Kelly is a professor of political science at Pusan National University. He writes a monthly column for CNA, published every second Monday.