How Can South Korea Navigate Its Relationship with the United States

CGTN Europe

CGTN Europe spoke to Robert Kelly, Professor of Political Science, Pusan National University.

Transcript

00:00Well, Robert Kelly is a professor of political science at Pusan National University.

00:06Here in South Korea, before public opinion in the media and elites and so on,

00:11the U.S. relationship is the most important one for South Korea in its diplomatic relations.

00:16And so getting along with the American president, no matter who he might be in this case, right,

00:22is always important. And so, yeah, I think President Lee needs to do a good job,

00:26or at least passable, before the Korean media. Sure.

00:28Let's talk a little bit more about the tariffs. Of course, there's that loose agreement that the

00:32U.S. will charge only 15 percent import tariffs in exchange for Seoul investing, I think,

00:38about $350 billion in America. Do you expect any details on this to emerge from this meeting?

00:44And if so, what might that be? Yeah, that's actually really tricky,

00:48because in Trump's relationships with other U.S. allies, you've gotten similar deals like this,

00:52and nobody really knows what those mean, right? I mean, this is one of the big problems of the

00:56Trump administration. It's all sort of very personalistic. It's all sort of like,

01:00how does Trump feel about a particular interlocutor? Does he like somebody? Does he get along with

01:04them? Nothing is written down. Nothing goes before the legislatures, right? I mean,

01:08in the Korean case, there's a treaty that the U.S. and South Korea both signed and ratified in 2018,

01:13and a version before that in 2011. I mean, that's black-letter law, as the lawyers would say,

01:18and Trump has just thrown that out. It's really risky to trust Donald Trump, right? And so this is

01:25why, for example, the European Union has really sort of hesitated a lot on this sort of strange

01:30commitment that, you know, its companies would fork over hundreds of billion dollars of investments.

01:34I'm not sure the South Korean government could actually coerce South Korean companies to do that.

01:38I mean, I'm not sure even if that's legal. It's probably not legal in the European Union.

01:41And so I would imagine that's actually one of the things that the people are trying to sort of get

01:45down on paper. Like, what exactly do you want? And can you put it over your signature

01:51so they can't change the terms in a year or two or four? Because again, that's what Trump did with

01:56the current U.S.-Korea trade treaties. What leverage does South Korea have? I'm thinking

02:01particularly of their sale of semiconductors and how important that is to America.

02:09Generally speaking, South Korea is on a tough spot if Americans really want to play hardball,

02:13because if the United States were to leave South Korea, South Korea's defense costs would

02:16double or triple. The American defense guarantee really helps to keep South Korea's defense budget

02:21much, much lower than it otherwise might be. South Korea would probably have to build nuclear

02:26weapons if the U.S. were to leave. There would also be massive foreign capital flight out of South

02:31Korea if the U.S. were to leave. And that's the kind of thing that Trump loves to wave that kind of stick,

02:35right? And we've seen that in his dealings with other U.S. allies. Probably the best points of leverage

02:39that the South Koreans have, I would actually argue, is shipbuilding. This is something that

02:45the U.S. Navy has really begun to emphasize, right? If the U.S. and China are going to compete,

02:49China's got the potential to build an enormous number of ships per year. The United States does

02:53not. And so this has actually kind of been growing on the U.S. agenda vis-à-vis China in the last

02:58couple of years, right? Where are we going to get the shipbuilding capacity to compete, to build more

03:02destroyers and missile cruisers and things like that? And South Korea actually can do that,

03:06and that might be a way for them to at least rope in the Defense Department to push back on Trump's

03:12erraticness. What do you make, if anything, of the timing of this visit? Because, of course,

03:18over the weekend, President Lee was in Japan. Is that significant for you?

03:25It is significant that he went to Japan first, and I think, again, that reflects on Donald Trump. I

03:30mean, Trump is a really erratic partner, right? It's just not really clear if U.S. partners can

03:34rely on U.S. extended deterrence anymore, right? And so if you're Korea and Japan and the Americans

03:40are suddenly looking shaky, right, then it's wise to talk to one another. And to a certain extent,

03:47because U.S. was around so heavily in the past, the Japanese-Korean relationship was probably more

03:53tense than otherwise would have been. But without the Americans, you know, that kind of forced the

03:58two of them to get along better.

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