The shocking attempted coup by South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol caught Koreans and the world by surprise. Even though the country was embroiled in a bitter political divide between progressives and conservatives, the declaration of martial law stunned Koreans and sent shockwaves through Washington and Tokyo.
For a few hours, Korea seemed poised on the brink of a potentially violent clash between the armed forces and masses of protesters. The triumph of democratic institutions was rapid and reassuring.
The unanimous vote of the National Assembly to overrule the martial law declaration was echoed outside the building by the refusal of civil society, the media, and even the conservative Peoples Power party to bow to threats of repression
The celebration of democracy is tempered by the highly uncertain path of the coming months. Yoon is attempting to strike a pose of defiance, hoping he can survive.
The National Assembly voted on Saturday evening on impeachment, with demonstrators outside in the streets of Seoul. Ruling party lawmakers walked out on the proceeding, preventing the two-thirds majority vote that would be required to impeach, but the opposition plans to try again. No matter what the outcome, Yoon’s rule is effectively over.
An early presidential election will likely lead to the triumph of Democratic party leader Lee Jae-myung, who lost the last contest to Yoon by less than one percent.
Many questions remain unanswered, not least why President Yoon took this enormous risk with apparently very little preparation and with the support of only a tiny circle of close allies. How much was the military ready to back Yoon’s insurrection? Why was Washington, which has invested so much in the success of the Yoon government, caught off guard?
But what seems clearer is that the replacement of Yoon by the Progressive Democratic Party will bring real change in key areas of South Korean foreign and security policy, beginning with relations with Japan and China, with the United States and with North Korea.
Clues to what may be on the progressive agenda were contained in a key paragraph in the impeachment resolution put before the National Assembly. Along with the serious crimes charged against Yoon, most of all an illegal attempt to use the martial law provisions, the resolution offered this indictment of the president’s foreign policy:
“In addition, under the guise of so-called ‘value diplomacy,’ Yoon has neglected geopolitical balance, antagonizing North Korea, China, and Russia, adhering to a bizarre Japan-centered foreign policy and appointing Pro-Japan individuals to key government positions, thereby causing isolation in Northeast Asia and triggering a crisis of war, abandoning his duty to protect national security and the people.”
Close observers of Korean politics read this as a signal of what progressive foreign policy will look like after Yoon leaves and if Lee Jae-myung becomes President.
“Now the opposition party has even more incentive to do a wholesale cleansing of all Yoon policies, including foreign policy,” Benjamin Engel, a visiting professor at Seoul’s Dankook University, told Toyo Keizai Online.
“If a normal democratic transition took place we may have seen a somewhat healthier debate on the pros and cons of what Yoon’s foreign policy accomplished and what should be kept or revised. That won’t happen now.”
The top of the progressive target list, as the impeachment resolution makes clear, is relations with Japan. The Democratic party has been highly critical of Yoon’s outreach to Japan, arguing that South Korea made repeated concessions to Japan on issues of wartime history such as the forced laborers, without getting much in return.
While there is considerable public support for the improvement of relations with Japan, that policy may now be tainted by Yoon’s ignominious downfall.
“If the opposition party grasps power, current Korea-Japan relations will go through a very rough time, as well as Korea-US relations,” predicts a former senior South Korean official who remains very engaged in Japan policy. In particular, the progress made in building trilateral security cooperation between Japan, Korea and the US “will no longer be viable.”
Influential figures in the opposition Democratic Party who have been involved with Japan for a long time insist that relations can still develop positively, but emphasize the need to get Korean public support and for Japan to be more forthcoming.
“The administration’s unilateral foreign policy approach has failed to build political momentum,” National Assembly member Wi Sung-lac, a former diplomat and close foreign policy advisor to former presidential candidate Lee, told this writer. “Public sentiment remains negative, especially on historical issues like Japan’s refusal to apologize and its denial of forced labor.”
Wi pledged that if the Democrats return to power, the “stance that Korea-Japan cooperation is necessary will remain unchanged.” But he added, “the pace of progress will depend on Japan’s response. If Japan responds constructively, there is significant potential for improving bilateral relations, though the speed and intensity of that improvement will vary.”
The potential shift in government in Seoul poses a challenge to the government of Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba. The prime minister had been gearing up for a visit to South Korea in January, part of preparations to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations. Ishiba is himself an advocate of close relations with Korea and has been more willing to confront the issues of Japan’s wartime and colonial past.
At the least, this effort will have to deal with months of political uncertainty. At worst, a progressive government will come to power and want to slow down the pace of Korea-Japan ties. And that may be compounded by the return of Donald Trump, who does not share the Biden administration’s commitment to creating more durable trilateral cooperation.
“Now, the Japanese government must prepare for a perfect storm,” says Tobias Harris, the head of the Japan Foresight consulting firm.
“Yoon will be either severely constrained or removed entirely; the swing to the left feared in Tokyo could happen in 2025 instead of 2027; and Japan will face a US president who not only is skeptical of US alliance commitments but prefers bilateral to multilateral negotiations and has evinced little interest in strengthening trilateral cooperation.”
As the impeachment resolution indicates, progressives have also been critical of US attempts to pull Korea into a defacto China containment strategy. If Trump pushes hard in this direction, and makes demands on the alliance such as higher defense cost sharing, he may meet some resistance.
“But the alliance with the US is so popular in South Korea, I don’t see Lee or another progressive trying to undermine it,” says Engels. “The major impetus for that will come from Trump”
Lee, Engels says, “will be more neutral, I think, in US-China competition. But even liberals have a limit in how close to China they can move. South Korean public opinion will be against it.”
One potential area of convergence between Trump and a progressive administration may be an attempt to resume diplomatic engagement with Kim Jong Un and North Korea. The progressive government of Moon Jae-in was a partner to Trump’s first-administration efforts to reach a deal with Kim. Whether the North Koreans will be interested in resuming this effort, even with a change of party in Seoul, is far from clear.
“Their current line is that the South is the enemy nation no matter who is in charge,” Fyodor Tertitskiy, an expert on North Korea and a Lecturer at Korea University, told Toyo Keizai Online.
“The previous left administration failed to deliver anything substantial for them – so it seems they (or, rather, Kim personally) have lost any hope in South Korea. Having said that, I think they would definitely prefer the Democrats to People’s Power, since at least the left would be far less aggressive, and maybe even deferential in their policy towards Pyongyang.”
Indeed, Yoon has led a sharply anti-Communist turn in South Korea. In his martial law declaration, he claimed to be acting to counter pro-North Korean forces who sought to seize control of the South Korean government.
Such views have been circulating for the last few years in ultra-conservative circles that saw Yoon as their savior. But Yoon’s attempt to point the finger at Communists “will backfire and undermine his leadership,” says the former senior official.
For now, Yoon clings to power in Seoul. The former senior official describes him as having “a seige mentality because of recent all-out political attacks against him and his wife from the opposition party and even from within his own ruling party.”
Yoon’s desperation, sadly, may end up destroying one of the most significant achievements of his troubled time in office, the restoration of relations with Japan and the beginnings of serious cooperation.
Danel Sneider is a lecturer on international policy at Stanford.
This article was originally published by The Oriental Economist. It is republished with permission.
