Protesters supporting South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol stage a rally against opposition party's politicians in Seoul, South Korea, on Dec. 6.Ahn Young-joon/The Associated Press
South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol’s botched attempt to enact martial law this week has cast a pall of uncertainty across East Asia, where a key security alliance with the U.S. and Japan was already looking wobbly because of political developments in both countries.
Legislators in South Korea quickly overturned the martial law declaration and lined up behind an effort to remove Mr. Yoon from office. In Tokyo, Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba also appears unlikely to finish his term after elections in October resulted in the ruling Liberal Democratic Party losing its majority for the first time in 15 years. In Washington, the imminent return of Donald Trump has raised questions about whether he will be as committed to the alliance as incumbent President Joe Biden.
In the past, Mr. Trump has been openly skeptical of the value of having U.S. military assets in both Japan and South Korea, and has called on both countries to pay more toward their own defence.
Already, the chaos in South Korea has shaken the region. On Thursday, Mr. Ishiba said Japan’s security situation “may be fundamentally changed” by the instability in South Korea and growing threats from North Korea. In Taiwan, the island’s leader, Lai Ching-te, called an emergency meeting of his national-security team to assess the “potential risks and impact” of the situation.
Both Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson and U.S. Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin called off planned trips to South Korea this week, according to media reports. Washington has also indefinitely suspended nuclear deterrence talks with Seoul.
“Unlike Vegas, what happens in Seoul doesn’t stay in Seoul. It affects the Korean Peninsula, the region and the world,” said James Trottier, a fellow of the Canadian Global Affairs Institute and former senior diplomat in South Korea.
Of the three countries, South Korea was always the weakest link in the alliance. The country’s political parties are starkly divided over foreign policy, with Mr. Yoon advocating a tough stance toward North Korea and China, and conciliation with South Korea’s former colonial ruler, Japan. The opposition Democratic Party has historically sought dialogue with Pyongyang and Beijing, and been more skeptical of Tokyo.
Rebuilding relations with Japan and firming up ties with Washington – where Mr. Yoon charmed officials by singing American Pie during a visit to the White House last year – has been the South Korean President’s sole major success since he took office in 2022. He has faced resistance to his domestic agenda from an opposition-dominated legislature.
The instability prompted by his decision this week to attempt to seize power militarily could have grave consequences for South Korea. The country’s economy is already faltering, with both inflation and household debt high and growth slowing. Income inequality is among the worst in the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, youth unemployment is high and the country continues to struggle with record-low birth rates.
At the same time, the threat from North Korea is greater than it has been for years. Mr. Yoon’s hard-line policy wiped out any goodwill with Pyongyang that was left from the administration of his predecessor, Moon Jae-in, who organized several historic peace summits between himself, Mr. Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.
In January, Mr. Kim said he was abandoning the cause of Korean unification, once a key tenet on both sides of the border, and that he now considered the South to be his country’s “primary foe.” Since then, Pyongyang has threatened to annex South Korea, tested new ballistic missiles and sent troops to aid Russia’s war in Ukraine. Seoul has warned this will likely result in Moscow providing more advanced weapons to North Korea in return.
“Disunity and upheaval in South Korea increases the incentive for North Korea to undertake provocations,” Mr. Trottier said, adding these could take many forms, from ballistic missile firings to a long-awaited seventh nuclear test. That nothing had happened already, he said, was likely because Pyongyang was as surprised as anyone by Mr. Yoon’s actions.
Hanging over this week’s events has been the imminent return of Mr. Trump, who during his first term vacillated from calling Mr. Kim “little rocket man” and threatening North Korea with nuclear annihilation, to becoming the first sitting U.S. president to sit down with a North Korean counterpart and set foot in the country. He even struck up an affectionate correspondence with Mr. Kim.
Mr. Yoon congratulated Mr. Trump on his election last month, saying the future of the South Korean-U.S. alliance “will shine brighter” under the latter’s strong leadership. But many in Seoul are concerned Mr. Trump will reduce U.S. engagement in the region, with some even advocating for the South to develop its own domestic nuclear program to counter the North if the country can’t depend on Washington to come to its aid.
The Koreas are unlikely to be a major priority for Mr. Trump when he takes office, with his grand plans to remake the U.S. bureaucracy and end wars in Ukraine and the Middle East. How he handles the peninsula will likely depend on who is in power in Seoul next year.
Mr. Moon, Mr. Yoon’s liberal predecessor who favoured rapprochement with the North, developed something of a reputation as a Trump whisperer, cultivating the U.S. president’s feeling that he might win a Nobel Peace Prize for his talks with Mr. Kim.
With South Korea’s conservative movement riven by divisions over Mr. Yoon’s actions, Democratic Party Leader Lee Jae-myung is widely tipped to be the country’s next president. A rival of Mr. Moon’s inside the party, Mr. Lee would nevertheless likely recreate many of his policies, including by stabilizing relations with North Korea and taking a softer line toward China, which he has said should be seen as a “strategic partner.”
Regardless of the flavour of government, South Korea will have to work hard to reassure its allies of its stability moving forward. Mr. Yoon’s actions, Democratic Party representative Kang Yoo-jung said, had created “a diplomatic crisis of unimaginable severity.”
“The next government will have to shoulder the grave responsibility of overcoming this crisis of international trust,” she said.
With reports from Hyeong Jin Choi and Reuters