US-Korea Alliance To Change Under Lee Jae-Myung

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Later that year, in August 2023, Presidents Biden and Yoon and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida pledged mutually beneficial cooperation in the fields of security, intelligence and technology.

For the United States, Yoon's diplomatic initiative took considerable political courage to pull off and its success played into the Biden administration's goal of creating a constellation of“minilateral” frameworks throughout the Indo-Pacific theater.

Lee's“pragmatic” foreign policy

To the extent Lee has a foreign policy doctrine, he keeps it close to his chest.

As an opposition legislator, he flirted with traditional DP-aligned views of the US-South Korea alliance, which tended to emphasize greater South Korean autonomy and a more equitable defense relationship with Washington.

During his first presidential campaign in 2021, Lee was chillier on relations with Tokyo . While he said he would try to improve the relationship, he stressed that a sincere and heartfelt apology from the Japanese over the forced labor issue was a requirement.

In perhaps one of his most controversial comments at that time, Lee alleged in 2021 that the United States collaborated with pro-Japanese forces after World War II to form the modern-day Republic of Korea – remarks that sparked significant blowback.

Yet in the four years since, Lee's foreign policy views have moved farther toward the center. Whether this was a campaign strategy to attract moderate voters or a true paradigm change is still unknown.

Either way, Lee's favorite word these days is“pragmatic.” Throughout this latest election cycle, he has made a concerted effort to depict himself as somebody who isn't ideological and whose aims include balancing Seoul's various foreign relationships.

As if to underscore his pro-American credentials. Lee gave a TIME magazine interview , in part to allay whatever fears had emerged about his past positions. In it, he described Seoul's military alliance with the United States as not only a fundamental component of South Korean foreign policy but also a crucial node in maintaining a stable balance of power in the region.

At the same time, Lee doesn't hold much animosity toward China. Whereas the Trump administration is currently in the midst of a systemic rivalry with Beijing across multiple domains, South Korea under a Lee presidency will seek to preserve whatever flexibility and operating space Seoul has between the two superpowers.

Although South Korean public opinion has soured on China lately, South Korean policymakers can't afford to alienate the Chinese by enabling Washington's containment policy against Beijing.

After all, China is still South Korea's largest trading partner, and the memory of the 2016-2017 THAAD incident, when Beijing slapped regulatory restrictions and tourism bans on Seoul in retaliation in retaliation for hosting a US missile defense system, is never far from the mind.

Lee will face a difficult juggling act between improving relations with China on the one hand and bolstering relations with Washington on the other – the very scenario US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth warned against during his speech at the Shangri-La security conference last week.

Finally, Seoul's policy on North Korea is likely to change as well.

Unlike Yoon, who took a hard line on Pyongyang by scrapping the 2018 inter-Korean military de-escalation accord, resuming loudspeaker broadcasts across the DMZ and treating North Korean denuclearization as a prerequisite for positive relations with the South, Lee is bound to follow the traditional DP-aligned platform.

The resumption of military-to-military hotlines and other communication channels between the two Koreas has already been broached, including during Lee's inauguration speech, and it wouldn't be a surprise if the new South Korean administration sought to negotiate a mutual return to the inter-Korean de-escalation accord.

In the grand scheme, however, the success of Lee's North Korea policy hinges on the willingness of Kim Jong Un and Donald Trump to buy into it.

The big challenge: 'strategic flexibility'

If there is one long-term challenge that could cause the most friction between the United States and South Korea, it's“strategic flexibility,” or the notion that US forces stationed in South Korea may be deployed to a contingency that has nothing to do with the Korean Peninsula.