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Seoul Shattering
The geopolitical risks of South Korea’s political turmoil
Sudeep Paul
Sudeep Paul
05 Jan, 2025
The turmoil in South Korea hasn’t received as much attention as it should have in both India and the West because what is seen as a domestic political crisis is indeed a domestic crisis—so far. But events since Yoon Suk Yeol’s botched attempt at imposing martial law, with a failed and then a successful—the Constitutional Court is sitting in judgment on it—attempt at impeaching him followed by the removal of his first interim successor, to the failure of police to arrest the suspended president despite a warrant, after being physically thwarted by his security team, have become steadily more dangerous, not less.
Why? Although the Korean peninsula has seen only a rise and fall of the threat level, it never lost its character as one of the riskiest places on the planet where both a nuclear war and even the next big global conflict could start. Indeed, the Koran peninsula is the living ghost of the Cold War.
It’s not without irony that the one South Korean president who seemed to have grasped this geopolitical moment better than his predecessors, and likely successors among either conservatives or progressives, turned out to be the most disgraceful and disgraced in the country’s still short history as a young democracy.
Yoon has had three important foreign policy successes: one, he reaffirmed the military alliance with the US when domestic criticism of the continued dependency on the US and the presence of the US military on Korean soil has been rising; two, he overhauled Seoul’s relationship with Tokyo by waiving the longstanding demand for an apology from Japan for its historical hostility to Korea and compensation for war crimes; and three, he was the first South Korean president to abandon the traditional balancing of a military alliance with Washington and deferring to Beijing for both trade (China being South Korea’s biggest trade partner) and strategic goodwill.
Koreans do not like rocking other people’s boats and Yoon’s comments on Taiwan and undisguised apprehensions about China’s intent seemed to have gone too far for even some members of his own party. However, his firm line on North Korea has been less successful. True, Pyongyang under Kim Jong Un had moved away from seeing South Korea as a partner for eventual reunification to proclaiming a permanent division of the Korean peninsula. But Yoon’s rhetoric and Kim’s recent increased nuclear proliferation and weapons’ testing have gone hand in hand. Moreover, North Korea’s partnership with Russia has complicated things for both Seoul and Beijing.
The turn of events in South Korea is doubly unfortunate given both the domestic political map as well as changes in Japan. The left-leaning Democratic Party, which won last April’s parliamentary elections, has been scathing in its attacks on Yoon for building relations with Japan and is likely to reverse the progress if it gets the chance. It is also an adherent of the old South Korean line of never saying or doing anything that might displease Beijing. On the other hand, new Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba is strangely conciliatory towards Pyongyang and a sceptic when it comes to the sanctions regime against North Korea.
The South Korean crisis comes at a time the US and its allies—and that includes the Quad—are tensely awaiting China’s moves in the Indo-Pacific, specifically its plan of action vis-à-vis Taiwan. The rapprochement between Seoul and Tokyo was most welcome in Washington. And matters have been complicated further by the uncertainties of what approach a new US administration will take on many things—from tariffs, which will affect South Korea too and has already prompted its central bank to lower interest rates, to Ukraine and North Korea.
The Koran peninsula is the living ghost of the Cold War. It can trigger a major global war, even more so now than in the days of Kim Jong-il. It’s not alarmist to keep that in mind, especially in a New Delhi looking across the mountains and over the seas for its own deadliest foe.
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