By Park Jung-won
In 2024, presidential and general elections will be held in 40 countries around the world, including Taiwan, Russia, South Korea and the United States. Of course, elections are mainly a domestic issue for the country concerned, but the results will also have significant impacts on South Korea, due to increasing interlinkages in the global community in areas of international politics, security and the world economy.
The result of Taiwan’s presidential election, to be held in January, will be particularly consequential. The election of a candidate from the ruling Democratic Progressive Party, which is anti-China, could intensify cross-strait tensions. This has a direct bearing on the security of the Korean Peninsula and the rest of East Asia. The Russia-Ukraine War has also become directly connected to the security of South Korea, as it has led to weapons and technology transactions between Russia and North Korea; Russia reportedly provided technical support for North Korea’s military reconnaissance satellite launched last November. It is a given that Vladimir Putin will be re-elected as Russia’s president in a nominal presidential election in March, while Ukraine faces great difficulties amid waning Western military aid and domestic corruption issues that affect its political cohesion. Growing strains between the U.S. and China over Taiwan and Russia’s dominance on the battlefield in Ukraine are both scenarios that North Korean leader Kim Jong-un is hoping for.
The Korean Peninsula will be especially affected by the geopolitical uncertainty of 2024. Following the war in Ukraine and the Hamas-Israel War, a recent poll found that 48 percent of Americans believe President Joe Biden is spending too much money on Ukraine (for Republican supporters the figure was 65 percent). If an armed conflict occurs on the Korean Peninsula, Americans’ war fatigue will only increase, and it may be difficult to count on active U.S. support for South Korea. If North Korea mass-produces solid-fuel ICBMs in earnest and its number of nuclear weapons increases to 200-300, it is obvious that the U.S. will feel even more limited in its ability to defend against the North’s missiles and nuclear weapons. There is already widespread pessimism in Washington leading to the conclusion that the denuclearization of North Korea has become impossible.
If Donald Trump becomes the next U.S. president, various changes to the South Korea-U.S. alliance may become inevitable. Besides Trump’s demand for a five-fold increase in South Korea’s share of defense costs for the U.S. troop presence, there is also concern that he will accept North Korea’s status as a nuclear power through a summit with Kim Jong-un. The possibility of Trump withdrawing U.S. troops from South Korea cannot be ruled out. In a worst-case scenario, the newly formed trilateral cooperation system between South Korea, the U.S. and Japan through the Nuclear Consultation Group could be dismantled. With the inauguration of a pro-Russian Trump administration, the possibility of an abrupt end to the war in Ukraine on unfavorable terms could also become a reality. If so, the present rules-based international order could be irreparably damaged.
South Korean society, with concerted effort from both the government and private sector, needs to prepare seriously for the unwelcome possibilities that could take shape the year 2024. We should ask South Korea’s so-called experts on North Korea fundamentally: Do you honestly believe there is a way to denuclearize North Korea? Is there any way for the United States to use its military might to carry out this task? It is unlikely. Cooperation between Seoul and Washington on North Korea must be maintained, but it is all too clear that it will not fundamentally eliminate the North’s nuclear threat. If a second Trump administration acquiesces to North Korea’s possession of nuclear weapons through negotiations and additionally provides the North economic aid, in return for an unsatisfactory disarmament compromise, his government may be able to tell the American people that it has escaped the North’s nuclear threat, but South Korea will be forced to live with unbearable danger.
Seoul, then, should consider very seriously what it does at this juncture. It would be unwise to leave South Korea’s fate entirely to the U.S., which elects a new president every four or eight years. To prevent nuclear provocation or attack as a result of North Korean misjudgment, it would seem imperative to seek an independent nuclear response strategy that establishes an inter-Korean nuclear balance. Moreover, in the case that Japan moves towards nuclear armament for its own defense, it would be most urgent for South Korea to secure at least a Japanese level of nuclear fuel reprocessing and uranium enrichment capability so that it is not left as the only non-nuclear state in its neighborhood.
In this new Cold War era of multipolarity, when accurate predictions of major powers’ moves are difficult to make, the scope of policy must diverge from the past. The year 2024 could be one that heralds the start of an era in which South Korea takes a path that it has never taken before. What does South Korea, whose national survival is at stake, need most? It is to gather national opinion and unite to develop new countermeasures that will allow it to move forward in a secure and orderly manner. Will South Korea be able to overcome this crisis? For South Korea to exist as a country, in the end, it is an inevitable and unavoidable task not only for politicians but also for all citizens to face this challenge. It is not a problem that can be left to the U.S. to resolve. If South Koreans cannot confidently complete this task, they will have no choice but to bear the cold consequences, because everything is a trade-off.
Park Jung-won (park_jungwon@hotmail.com), Ph.D. in law from the London School of Economics (LSE), is a professor of international law at Dankook University.
South Korea's inevitable security trade-offs
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04.01.2024
By Park Jung-wonIn 2024, presidential and general elections will be held in 40 countries around the world, including Taiwan, Russia, South Korea and the United States. Of course, elections are mainly a domestic issue for the country concerned, but the results will also have significant impacts on South Korea, due to increasing interlinkages in the global community in areas of international politics, security and the world economy.
The result of Taiwan’s presidential election, to be held in January, will be particularly consequential. The election of a candidate from the ruling Democratic Progressive Party, which is anti-China, could intensify cross-strait tensions. This has a direct bearing on the security of the Korean Peninsula and the rest of East Asia. The Russia-Ukraine War has also become directly connected to the security of South Korea, as it has led to weapons and technology transactions between Russia and North Korea; Russia reportedly provided technical support for North Korea’s military reconnaissance satellite launched last November. It is a given that Vladimir Putin will be re-elected as Russia’s president in a nominal presidential election in March, while Ukraine faces great difficulties amid waning Western military aid and domestic corruption issues that affect its political cohesion. Growing strains between the U.S. and China over Taiwan and Russia’s dominance on the battlefield in Ukraine are both scenarios that North Korean leader Kim Jong-un is hoping........
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