South Korea’s new left-leaning president, Lee Jae-myung, plans to foster friendly relations with China and reduce tensions with North Korea, in contrast with the staunchly pro-U.S. stance of his conservative predecessor.
In his inauguration speech Wednesday, Mr. Lee advanced what he calls a “pragmatic” diplomacy rooted in South Korea’s national interests. This marks a departure from the more values-based approach of former President Yoon Suk Yeol, who was removed from office in April after his short-lived imposition of martial law last December.
China is South Korea’s largest trading partner, and Mr. Lee “wants to signal to China there is still space to strengthen the relationship,” says Andrew Yeo, SK-Korea Foundation Chair at the Brookings Institution’s Center for Asia Policy Studies.
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The election of Lee Jae-myung heralds a foreign policy shift for South Korea as the country seeks to balance its critical U.S. security alliance with a more pragmatic, amicable approach to China.
Chinese leader Xi Jinping reciprocated that sentiment, congratulating Mr. Lee on his election win and stressing that he “attaches great importance” to developing China-Republic of Korea relations, according to a statement released by the Foreign Ministry in Beijing on Wednesday.
Yet Mr. Lee, who won 49% of the vote in South Korea’s snap election Tuesday and immediately took office, faces a delicate task in recalibrating toward greater cooperation with China, while maintaining Seoul’s vital security relationship with the United States. In Washington, Secretary of State Marco Rubio also congratulated Mr. Lee, calling the U.S.-Republic of Korea alliance “ironclad.”
Mr. Lee acknowledged Seoul’s U.S.-China balancing act when summarizing his approach in April. “The Korea-US alliance is indeed the foundation” of South Korea’s foreign policy, and “Japan is also important,” he said. “But we cannot be unilaterally bound to those alone. … We should also maintain amicable relations with China and Russia – trade with them, and cooperate with them.”
An expected pivot
Mr. Lee’s foreign policy approach is no surprise.
As a presidential candidate in 2022, he outlined what he calls this “practical vision” for diplomacy in a Foreign Affairs article. “South Korea must … maintain a partnership with China,” he wrote then. He acknowledged Beijing’s “increasingly assertive behavior,” but said “overt antagonism” would not serve Seoul’s interests.
This approach also comports with that of other Korean center-left politicians, such as Moon Jae-in, who served as president from 2017 to 2022.
“Lee’s policy will be dovish toward North Korea and China,” similar to Mr. Moon’s, says Myunghee Lee, assistant international relations professor at the James Madison College of Michigan State University. “The South Korean government … believes that they have to rely on the United States for security guarantees, but they also do not want to upset China for economic reasons.”
Taiwan tensions loom
One of the key areas where Mr. Lee is likely to make changes is in South Korea’s stance on a possible conflict in the Taiwan Strait, and how Seoul would respond. While Mr. Yoon went further in voicing support for Taiwan and opposing any Chinese use of force, Mr. Lee has already stated that South Korea would steer clear of military involvement, says Dr. Yeo, who is also a professor of politics at Catholic University in Washington.
Mr. Lee and his progressive Democratic Party “fear that South Korea could get dragged into a conflict” by the U.S., or itself become a target for China, he says. “Taiwan is not worth the risk; that is the progressive view.”
Such a position is likely to encounter opposition from Washington, which seeks to strengthen the defense alliance with South Korea and Japan in part to deter Chinese military intervention in Taiwan.
Mr. Lee is highly aware of South Korea’s reliance upon the U.S. for its security and for deterring an attack from North Korea. “They also fear abandonment” on that front, says Dr. Yeo.
So barring an eruption of historical frictions with Tokyo, Mr. Lee is likely to continue the trilateral defense cooperation with the U.S. and Japan that was enthusiastically promoted by Mr. Yoon. At the same time, he has already moved to lower tensions with North Korea, calling in his inauguration speech for opening a dialogue with Pyongyang to advance peace on the peninsula.
Attitudes toward China
Another challenge that Mr. Lee faces in pursuing cooperation with China is the strong anti-China sentiment among South Koreans, more than 70% of whom hold negative views of China, polls show. China’s use of economic coercion against South Korea has fueled such anti-Beijing attitudes in recent years.
Voters interviewed during this week’s election voiced strong reservations about Mr. Lee – often because they opposed his views on China.
Ann Scott Tyson/The Christian Science Monitor
“I don’t want our country to be eaten up by China,” says Lee Jian, a young entrepreneur who runs a perfume business in Seoul. “I care about democracy a lot, and I am worried that Korea will become like China.”
She was planning on voting for Mr. Lee’s opponent, Kim Moon-soo of the conservative People Power Party, which is hawkish on China.
Park Kum, a retired English teacher in Seoul, who rushed to see Mr. Kim at a campaign event Tuesday night, was even stronger in her concerns. If Mr. Lee wins the election, “We’re done – South Korea is done,” she says. “We will become communist.”
