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South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol began his five-year term on May 10 with a midnight security briefing from the ROK Joint Chiefs of Staff. This meeting, which precedes a May 21 summit between Yoon and U.S. President Joe Biden, reflects Yoon’s view that North Korea is the South’s “main enemy.”
Yoon’s presidency comes at a tumultuous time in U.S. foreign policy. Vladimir Putin’s war against Ukraine continues, and it enjoys Chinese support. Strategic competition is expanding with Beijing in the Indo-Pacific. North Korea’s Kim Jong Un has conducted 16 missile tests in 2022 so far. Raising the possibility of internal instability in North Korea is the COVID-19 outbreak that Kim has finally admitted to, after more than two years of claiming zero cases in the country.
In this context, the South Korea-U.S. alliance remains as important as ever. The upcoming summit provides an opportunity not only to reaffirm the alliance at the start of the Yoon administration, but also to build on the ROK-U.S. vision laid out in the May 2021 summit.
Opening a New Chapter
After that summit, the White House released a joint statement with Seoul, along with a fact sheet describing a new way forward for the alliance beyond the sides’ traditional military partnership. The documents outlined the alliance’s role in the Indo-Pacific and throughout the world in fields such as cyber, technology and innovation, and global health. They also describe the newly established U.S.-ROK Democracy and Governance Consultations.
However, the statement had a major omission: It did not call for a free and unified Korea.
Peaceful Unification
All South Korean and U.S. presidents since 2009 have called for peaceful unification of the Korean peninsula. The goal was emphasized during summit meetings in 2009, 2013, 2015, and 2017. While these declarations might seem merely aspirational, the division of the peninsula beginning in 1945 gave root to seven-plus decades of conflict, instability, and suffering — particularly among the Korean people living in the North. Biden previously called for peaceful unification in 2013 and 2020, first as vice president and then as a presidential candidate.
Yoon seeks to restore this policy. On Tuesday, he delivered an inauguration speech affirming the importance of freedom 32 times, peace 14 times, democracy seven times, and human rights five times. Although he did not specifically call for a free and unified Korea, a cursory analysis shows that he was describing the vision of a free Korea for all Koreans, in the North and in the South.
Only a unified Korea can achieve the vital goal of denuclearization. South Korea, the United States, China, Russia, and Japan have tried for three decades to negotiate the denuclearization of North Korea, but their efforts have all failed. Both Biden and Yoon should recognize that the only way to end Pyongyang’s nuclear program and its crimes against humanity is to seek unification. They should make an ironclad commitment to this objective.
This policy is also more urgent given the possibility of internal instability in North Korea. The COVID outbreak could be worse than the Arduous March, or the famine of 1994-1996. It could accelerate the regime’s breakdown in a way famine did not. Perhaps anticipating this, the regime told the Korean people in April 2021 to prepare for conditions worse than the 1990s famine. The alliance may have to intervene if North Korea’s regime collapses. If so, Seoul must be ready to carry out the unification process.
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David Maxwell, a 30-year veteran of the United States Army and retired Special Forces colonel, is a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), where he also contributes to FDD’s Center on Military and Political Power (CMPP). For more analysis from David and CMPP, please subscribe HERE. Follow David on Twitter @davidmaxwell161. Follow FDD on Twitter @FDD and @FDD_CMPP. FDD is a Washington-based, nonpartisan research institute focusing on national security and foreign policy.
