South Korea-U.S. alliance

I recently attended a track II dialogue on the state of the U.S.-ROK alliance. I found the following to be the key points of the meeting.

- The international security environment saw a process of redefinition after the Cold War, later punctuated by September 11th. Redefining international security means broadening the U.S.-ROK alliance. But it also means the need for compromise on how the U.S. wants to resolve matters like North Korea.

- Interesting things happen when international relations theory meets reality. Perhaps this is at root of some South Korea-U.S. disagreements. President Bush pushes the democratic peace theory, President Roh pushes neo-liberal, functionalist integration theory. The two administrations are working off different assumptions and neither president’s policies actually fit their theory.

- The current international tension among states comes from the U.S. moving on to a 21st century vision of international politics (focused on human security) while others still prefer the Westphalian system (based on state sovereignty). The pressing question for Asia then, is whether the Chinese value system, development model and nonintervention principle will compete with the U.S. vision?

- Lee Jung-suk taking over as Unification Minister does not represent policy change. He is however, more focused on new developments in ROK-China relations. Progressives say China is colonizing North Korea through increasing investment, trying to make North Korea the fourth province of northeast China; their conclusion: U.S. needs to get softer on North Korea. Conservatives agree China is colonizing North Korea but come to a very different conclusion: Seoul can’t trust Beijing and must work closer with Washington.

- It is a mistake to attribute strains in the alliance simply to the Bush-Roh dynamic. International structural conditions and especially the landscape of Korean domestic politics have changed since there was last a conservative party in control of the Blue House. It is thus a false hope to think that the alliance will return to the "good ol' days" if a GNP president is elected.

- The Bush administration sees the Six Party Talks as a waste of time until North Korea decides to give up its nukes. So the U.S. has switched from a sequential to parallel approach, also focusing on areas where the DPRK has hostile policies toward the U.S. (counterfeiting, trafficking of illicit cargo) and taking action through alternative mechanisms. But the Six Party Talks are unlikely to fall apart: all sides want to keep a ceiling on conflict, China does not want to loose face, the U.S. does not want to lose leverage of multiple actors and North Korea doesn’t want to lose a way out.

- Several interesting points were offered on the topic of anti-Americanism in South Korea:
* Many newspapers (where the older generation gets their news) are conservative, many television and internet media (where the younger generation gets their news) are very liberal.
* Anti-Americans are a vocal minority; 386 generation is exceptional (protest culture, not very internationalized) but important because they are distorting history in Korean education system (via policymaking, teachers unions).
* Media gives distorted perspective by over-covering radical anti-American activists, NGOs.
* Divide between U.S. and ROK is more between their leaderships than between their societies.
* Anti-Americanism is a threat to the alliance to the extent that U.S. policymakers take newspaper reports too seriously, see Korea as ungrateful and advocate its abandonment.
* But while anti-Americanism may not be pervasive, if it flares up during a campaign, it can change the outcome of the election.
* Need to recognize and further study different kinds of anti-Americanism: anti-U.S. foreign policy very different from anti-Americanization (associated with globalization).

Finally, here are what I consider the most important unanswered questions from the meeting:

1. How would Koreans like the U.S.-ROK alliance to look different from the U.S.-Japan alliance?

2. How do changing Korean perceptions of China compare to changing American perceptions of China?

3. How to productively address the status of Kaesong in the KORUS FTA negotiations?