The ROK-U.S. Alliance Must Be Recast as a Mutually Beneficial Partnership

Yang Il-guk

Vice Chair, Advanced Unification Research Council, Hansun Foundation

On February 1, 1981-amid oil shocks and severe cold-President Chun Doo-hwan visited the United States at the invitation of the Reagan administration. He persuaded President Reagan with the argument that “Japan has benefited because the Republic of Korea stands guard on the front line of the Cold War, so it ought to show sincerity.” Japan, albeit grudgingly, approved a $4 billion loan to us. Our status as a frontline state ceased to bring benefits with the advent of the 1997 foreign exchange crisis. Although the U.S. regarded Korea-U.S.-Japan trilateral coordination as a vital national interest, the Kim Young-sam administration provoked Japan by saying it would “teach them a lesson” The beef O-157 issue, which should have been protested at a reasonable level and then set aside, needlessly antagonized the United States and made matters worse. Had Korea-U.S. relations been robust, we might have avoided the IMF crisis- or at least found a less painful path. The crisis was the cane of international politics telling Korea it was no longer a poor nation suffering on the front line and must abandon any “sense of exemption,” fulfilling the responsibilities and obligations of an ally.

On the 25th of last month, the first summit between the Korean and U.S. leaders was, unprecedentedly, downgraded to a simple bilateral meeting, and despite pledging greater U.S.-bound investment relative to GDP than Japan, we have yet to secure even a single signed agreement. To make matters worse, on the 4th, 300 Korean workers were detained over visa issues at a battery plant in Georgia. Many citizens are perplexed, but in truth Washington had already sent multiple signals during the impeachment turmoil urging Korea, as a member of the free world and an ally, to act accordingly. For instance, this March the U.S. Department of Energy placed the Republic of Korea on its list of “countries of risk,” and in April it became known that a Patriot unit and one THAAD battery stationed in Korea had been redeployed to the Middle East. There have also been repeated warnings in U.S. policy circles about potential reductions of U.S. Forces Korea. Despite such signals, the Yoon administration and conservative camp effectively responded with internal strife, hastening President Lee Jae-myung’s inauguration.

To restore and sustain the alliance, we must first try to see from the American perspective. The recent series of U.S. actions can be viewed as an effort to reinforce its hegemonic status and demonstrate this fact to the international community. A reliable guide to understanding great powers is Paul Kennedy’s 1987 classic The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers. In short, from the 1500s to the 1980s, great powers commonly overextended on defense spending and overestimated their economic strength, leading to decline. This helps explain why the second Trump administration is pressing allies for tariffs and U.S. investment, and urging European partners to spend 5% of GDP on defense.

There is no doubt that the Trump administration’s purpose in tightening discipline and cohesion within the free world is to prevent China from challenging the United States. First, it shackled an “impertinent” China-whose export-led rise enabled it to challenge America-with initial tariffs. Early in his term, President Trump chilled nerves by threatening tariffs of 145% on Chinese goods, then reduced the number to 30% in April, displaying his characteristic tactic of raising tariffs yet drawing gratitude from Beijing. Subsequently, June’s “Midnight Hammer” operation employing B-2 bombers ostensibly targeted Iran’s nuclear facilities, but by also destroying oil storage sites it imposed severe disruptions on China’s energy supply. China is the largest buyer of Iranian crude, purchasing over 90%.

More recently, President Trump’s vow to impose secondary tariffs exceeding 100% on countries importing Russian oil is likewise seen as part of a broader plan to block China’s energy access. In 2020, 51% of Russia’s oil exports went to Europe; by the first half of 2025, that figure had fallen to 11%, and China is now the largest importer.

Given this pattern, states pursuing pro-China and anti-U.S. lines are unlikely to avoid corresponding economic and political penalties anytime soon. Whatever the behind-the-scenes story of the Lee-Trump meeting at the White House, the current chill in the alliance ultimately stems from our failure to behave as befits a member of the free world-something we must correct to repair relations. Money does not appear to be the sticking point. The $350 billion we pledged to invest in the U.S. amounts to 20.4% of last year’s nominal GDP; including energy purchases, it reaches 25%, and that excludes corporate-level U.S. investments. As of the July agreement, Japan’s U.S.-bound investment stood at 13.1% of its GDP, and the EU’s at 6.9%, meaning we promised an outlay roughly three times larger.

The more persuasive hypothesis is that the root problem lies in our misguided diplomatic line. A week before the summit, on August 18, Carla Sands, a senior fellow at the America First Policy Institute-home to many of the Trump administration’s key figures-wrote that “the Lee Jae-myung government believes it can bring both the U.S. and China into its orbit, but it lacks the diplomatic skill to do so.” As a former ambassador to Denmark who led negotiations over Greenland’s concessions, her message was essentially a warning that cozying up to China would draw a harsh response from President Trump. President Lee declared at CSIS in Washington one day before the bilateral that he was abandoning the “security with America, economy with China” (Anmi-gyeongjung) line, and even said he had settled historical issues with Japan in front of President Trump. But words alone were insufficient to convince Washington.

The United States is watching for “actions,” not rhetoric, from the Lee administration. Appointing a figure reluctant to name North Korea as the main enemy to lead the National Intelligence Service likely provoked the U.S., raising concerns about future intelligence sharing. The Moon administration previously courted controversy by naming as NIS policy director a figure identified as a ringleader in the 1985 U.S. Cultural Center occupation and sentenced to two years and six months in prison. More recently, the unification ministry’s decision to keep the North Korea Human Rights Report published annually since 2018 confidential was an act that could erode trust among free-world partners. In the past, West Germany operated a records preservation office during division, meticulously documenting East German abuses. When East German border guards refrained from firing on citizens rushing toward West Berlin upon hearing of travel permits in November 1989, it was because they knew their names would enter the archives and they would be judged by history.

Particularly troubling, irrespective of intent, was President Lee’s declaration in his first Liberation Day address that Korea would not seek absorption-based unification of the North. This deviates from the historical fact that, over the past century, Vietnam, Germany, and Yemen all cases of division and unification were reunified by absorption, and it risks conveying a message of acquiescence to the North’s tyrannical regime. Likewise, the complete halt of leaflet campaigns and NIS broadcasts that conveyed freedom and human rights to the North, and the unilateral removal of loudspeakers, should have been considered in light of international perceptions.

Lastly, diplomatic missteps in arranging the summit also undermined trust. On July 11, reports emerged that the National Security Council had discussed the restoration of wartime operational control (OPCON). On the 13th, Director Wi Sung-rak denied any such discussion and stated that nuclear reprocessing or extending missile range were not on the tariff negotiation agenda. This fueled speculation that Seoul had used OPCON restoration as a bargaining chip to extract U.S. concessions, only to face a strong rebuke. In addition, President Lee’s refusal of NATO’s invitation and his failure to promptly decline China’s invitation to its Victory Day commemoration were cited as serious diplomatic errors.

Many experts in the media portray the Trump administration which does not give Korea preferential treatment as an outlier and deem such U.S. behavior abnormal. Yet we also need a paradigm shift: the past Korea-U.S. relationship which we took for granted as one-sidedly beneficial was actually the exceptional and abnormal state. On the contrary, this tariff negotiation could be the catalyst for evolving the alliance into a sustainable, mutually beneficial, bilateral contractual relationship. To that end, the ruling camp should first demonstrate not merely declare that it is shedding ideology-driven politics politics through concrete actions.

History teaches that crises always arrive with opportunities. We should take a lesson from Israel, which closely cooperated with the second Trump administration to subdue Iran and Syria and lay a cornerstone for its national security, and from Japan, which, amid the tariff storm, acquired U.S. Steel and carved out new opportunities models for Korea’s diplomacy with the United States.

This article may differ from the views of the Hansun Foundation.

(※ It's a translation based on machine translation)