A View from the United States

The 2024 world faces globe-spanning conflict, political instability and polarization, and the threat of disinformation. Korea is not immune to these forces. The Yoon Suk-yeol administration has made two big swings in the South Korean foreign policy priorities: enhancing US-ROK alliance cooperation and laying the groundwork for trilateral cooperation with Japan and the United States. In most respects, these carry forward the longstanding foreign policy priorities that undergird Korean national strategy for decades. These moves seek to overcome some of the vulnerabilities in ROK capabilities as a mid-sized state and especially related to its challenging geographic position.  Seen from the United States, South Korea has awakened more fully to the threat from North Korea and made important strides in awareness of other threats.

American experts and pundits have spilt a vat-worth of ink analyzing traditional threats to South Korea, namely the China challenge and North Korea’s nuclear weapons program. Rather than rehash these perennial threats, this article examines emerging threats to South Korea’s security and economic stability that will be central to its 2024 foreign policy. Paying particular attention to structural issues, particularly external actors’ strategic shifts, I identify three threats to Korea’s ability to develop and implement a nation strategy that relies heavily on the American security guarantee and global partnership: (1) North Korea policy, (2) great power rivalry, and (3) calls for nuclear weapons.

In all three cases, the target of threat analysis is understanding how each threatens not only Korea’s security, but also its autonomy and capacity to develop and implement a national strategy and the very foundations of the ROK-US alliance. In lieu of a conclusion, I offer two policy recommendations for current South Korean and US officials for the central aims of bolstering regional stability and ensuring Korea’s security and economic goals.

North Korea Policy

From a traditional strategic standpoint, North Korea remains at the forefront of South Korea’s array of threats. The Yoon administration will soon release its own North Korea policy, and insiders suggest it will not differ much from earlier conservative administrations that prefer deterrence to engagement. The enduring challenges posed by Pyongyang encompass a range of issues, including its nuclear program, missile testing, aggressive rhetoric, inter-Korean relations, absence of confidence-building measures, and human rights abuses. Unfortunately, under Kim Jong-un’s leadership, the prospects for fostering confidence, reducing threats, and achieving reconciliation have become increasingly bleak in recent years.

North Korea’s growing nuclear arsenal and increasingly capable intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) capability undoubtedly present a clear and present threat to South Korean security and regional stability. Low-level provocations and weapons tests near the inter-Korean land and maritime boundaries present the constant risk of escalation. But, from 2024 South Korea faces a new North Korean threat in the form of Kim Jong-un announcing a significant constitutional amendment, removing the mandate for reunification with South Korea in January. External assessments of this pivotal legal alteration vary widely, with some experts suggesting it is a rhetorical shift to build up Kim Jong-un’s regime control, while others speculate that it could be a precursor to conflict.

How will South Korea respond to Pyongyang’s continued isolation now legally formalized? The reunification mandate is a core part of the ROK Constitution, which treats reunification as the raison d’être of the South Korean government in the Preamble. Article 3 stipulates “[t]he territory of the Republic of Korea shall consist of the Korean peninsula and its adjacent islands.” Article 4 extends that territorial definition into action, stating “[t]he Republic of Korea shall seek unification and shall formulate and carry out a policy of peaceful unification based on the principles of freedom and democracy.” The Constitution also privileges peaceful, rather than violent revisionist means in Article 5: “The Republic of Korea shall endeavor to maintain international peace and shall renounce all aggressive wars.”

If North Korea has declared a two-nation, two-state reality, what does that mean for South Korea’s mandate to pursue peaceful reunification? Younger Koreans do not favor reunification, a marked divergence from their parents and grandparents. According to public opinion data and in-depth research, many South Koreans in their 30s and under view North Korea as socially, economic, and politically different—a different nation, even if they do have ethnic affinity. In the long-term, there may be bigger legal or political issues at stake that challenge South Korea’s commitment to reunification.

Great Power Rivalry

South Korea faces the global tectonic shift toward multipolarity, regional instability, and the risk for conflict to proliferate into the Indo-Pacific due to great power competition and revisionism. In this, it is not only China and Russia but also the United States that figures into threat assessment. In other words, Seoul must not only deal with the “China challenge.” The largest threat to South Korea is the Sino-US rivalry mounting on the global stage. Compounding the challenge is the increasingly inauspicious geoeconomics, particularly pronounced in the Asia-Pacific, as countries have adapted to China’s economic coercion on the one side and US steps to securitize supply chains and critical minerals on the other.

Seoul has always found itself between a rock and a hard place when it comes to balancing the necessity of China as its largest economic partner with the security need and diplomatic prestige associated with being one of America’s strongest allies and partners in the Asia-Pacific. Sino-US rivalry itself is certainly not a new threat, but the patterns of global security since Russia’s full-scale war against Ukraine puts China and the United States at opposite ends of a geopolitical chess board.

While the US CHIPS and Science Act and Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) sharpened the pressures on Korean companies, the ROK government and industry had been pivoting toward American economic leadership and expanding their industrial footprint in the United States. This includes FDI, manufacturing facilities including high tech and automobiles, EV technology including chargers, and Silicon Valley investments: SK Signet EV chargers will be built in a factory in Texas, Hyundai Motor Companies opened an auto factory in Georgia, and SK Hynix has inked a deal to build a semiconductor packaging plant and R&D center in Indiana. Other foreign companies have also taken advantage of Korean manufacturing’s “friendshoring” in these critical industries, such as Nissan’s consideration to switch from Chinese-produced batteries to SK On batteries produced in the US for its EV fleet.

From one vantage point, moving these lines away from China de-risks their industries because it makes them less vulnerable to Beijing’s economic coercion—points commonly promoted by American diplomats, local politicians, and business leaders. Despite the promise of de-risking global supply chains from the view of Washington, South Korea’s efforts to decouple its economy and security puts it in a conundrum. South Korea currently relies on Chinese sources for 80 percent of critical minerals such as lithium and nickel but wants to reduce that to 50 percent by 2030. The conglomerates so essential to the domestic economy depend heavily on trans-national manufacturing, trade, supply routes, and markets.

Moving away from the region and its biggest market also presents potential threats to the backbone of Korea’s economy now dependent on global markets. Economic security and growth relate to geoeconomics—that is, practical geographic constraints mean Korea’s out-of-region or de-Sinicizing its industry and trade depends on secure and energy-dependent supply lines and secure trans-national communication networks.

Russia’s revisionist tactics revive the great power competition’s proxy on the Korean Peninsula. Korea was one of the first partners in the US-led assistance to Ukraine in the form of weapons supply and humanitarian assistance totaling $2.3 billion, which also puts it at odds with a North Korea-assisted Russia and on one side of the global geopolitical fence outside Beijing’s preference. Given the unlikelihood of North Korea agreeing to any South Korean or American engagement, this entrenches the battlelines between the two Koreas on the global scale.

The US perspective on great power rivalry prioritizes China’s increasing, long-term threat, puts a premium on maximum pushback to Russia’s dangerous behavior recently expanding to North Korea from Ukraine, and regards North Korea as best managed by full-scale deterrence with the door to diplomacy left open. US wariness about South Korea’s threat perceptions ranges from its more equivocal attitude toward China (as Yoon has shifted part way but is being resisted by progressive leaders, who prefer a balance between the US and China), its slower and somewhat incomplete response to Russia’s Ukraine war despite significant support for Ukraine, and worry that Yoon’s successor might revive President Moon Jae-in’s approach to North Korea, not taking the threat as seriously. If the ROK-US consensus on great power ties has strengthened greatly under Yoon, it remains less than ironclad and subject to political currents inside South Korea.

Calls for Nuclear Weapons

While North Korean nuclear weapons pose a growing threat, the redeployment of US tactical nuclear weapons or the acquisition of an indigenous nuclear capability could result in a threat to South Korea as well. Many in the political elite have been requesting the redeployment of US tactical nuclear assets, which were withdrawn in 1991. An even bigger threat would be to pursue its own nuclear capability, which Korea has the technology, resources, and raw materials to develop in a short time frame. These appeals have irked many in Washington, risking further alienation of South Korea’s security guarantor, and spurring negative—perhaps even violent—consequences from North Korea and China.

For decades, only a few voices promoted the idea of Korea developing its own nuclear weapons capability. North Korea’s demonstrated nuclear capability compounded by Trump’s repeated challenges to the alliance have fomented a sense of uncertainty in the US nuclear umbrella—not in terms of capability, but in terms of US willingness to counter a North Korean attack. Korean supporters of nuclear deployment have grown in number and flourished into a bona fide political force. Oft-cited public opinion data suggest that upwards of 70 percent of the Korean public support redeployment or indigenous development, though some have questioned the validity of the data based on surveys timed to particular news events.

The US guarantees Seoul its nuclear umbrella. But the core issue for Korean nuclear advocates seems to be a question of commitment and reciprocity. The search for a nuclear guarantee eludes even the strongest nuclear-armed states. In Korea, proponents of nuclear deployment or indigenous development argue that, even if tactical nuclear weapons closer to Pyongyang might not enhance deterrence, redeployment would serve as symbolic reassurance to Seoul that the US is committed to deter North Korea not only by denial, but also through the guarantee to punish North Korean adventurism. However, most of the US policy community takes issue with this. The June 2023 Washington Declaration altering the process of nuclear consultations made headway in reassuring South Koreans and calming the clamor for nuclear weapons, but there is no prospect of this issue fading away in the troubled environment which South Korea is facing.

Regarding North Korea, deployment or indigenous development could result in low-level provocations that risk escalation. For China, South Korea’s request for nuclear weapons—would raise serious concerns. If the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) deployed at the request of the US, not South Korea, prompted diplomatic ire and economic coercion, then China would see a Seoul plan for nuclear weapons deployment as a threat, even if its declared reason was limited to the North Korean threat. Based on past lessons and Chinese tactics for coercion across the region, Beijing’s response would undoubtedly involve economic and diplomatic retribution against South Korea, especially to its vulnerable industrial footprint in China.

If the Korean proponents, feeling snubbed by Washington, gain policy control and fail to secure redeployment of US tactical nuclear weapons, they might elect to develop an indigenous capability, as has been their stated second pathway. This would severely challenge the ROK’s longstanding commitment to the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula and decades of work on nonproliferation. The move would also flout its ratification of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) in 1975 and alienate the global partners it seeks to reach to expand its presence beyond Northeast Asia. Thus, the pursuit of nuclear weapons deployment would have the opposite consequence from the stated goals.

Conclusion

Korea may be one of the world’s top economies, but it is still a mid-sized state in a difficult geopolitical neighborhood with a shrinking population and concerns over economic security. Mitigating these external and internal threats requires two steps: institutionalizing partnerships within-region and deepening contributions to global governance. These will help shore up cooperation and secure diverse partners on the global stage. They are the objectives of US policy and should naturally follow from close agreement on the range of threats faced by Seoul.

South Korea remains bound to its geography and must reckon with a recalcitrant North Korea, mercurial China, and dominant United States. The region is on a path of Sino-US rivalry that will be difficult to reverse. Forming blocs in its own neighborhood with like-minded states—notably Japan—may produce dividends to augment Korea’s capacity to pursue its diplomatic, security, and economic objectives. While cooperation with Japan risks public backlash from many South Koreans, the historic Camp David Summit in 2023 among Yoon, Biden, and Kishida was favorably received in all three countries. Follow-on thoughtful and pragmatic bilateral cooperation with Japan and trilateral agenda-setting with Japan and the United States empowers Seoul against Beijing and Pyongyang. The key is to collaborate on trilateral strategy and deconflict unilateral security and economic policies to mitigate trade and industrial competition and restrain each other from actions that might provoke nearby adversaries. Many in Washington are concerned that South Korean wariness of Japan and lingering hopes for China may still stand in the way.

The Yoon administration’s efforts to look beyond the peninsula can mitigate the risks associated with the above threats. Despite its best efforts, South Korea has suffered some recent setbacks to efforts to align with middle power diplomacy. rather than accept the intensifying forces of polarization. Recently, Korea has been lobbying for inclusion in an expanded G7, but it was reported that it has not been invited to the G7 meeting in June this year. Countries from other regions, including Africa and the Middle East, have been invited, reflecting the current global political attention to conflict in those regions. While joining the top global economies could definitely enhance Korea’s global profile, the Yoon administration should strategically court international institutions and narrow the scope toward areas essential to economic security, including supply chain security and technology governance—where it has the capacity, technology, and reputation to serve as global leader. This broadened national strategy could build essential partnerships and sources of diplomatic, economic, and perhaps security support as we enter an uncertain era of global politics.