On December 3 last year, South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol declared martial law. After a motion for his impeachment was passed by the National Assembly on December 14, the president was finally removed from office on April 4 this year, and an election campaign kicked off for the next presidential election to take place on June 3.
The Constitutional Court’s announcement of its verdict in the impeachment trial was slower than expected, and by April there was talk of the possibility of the impeachment being dismissed and the president returning to his post. Under the light of dispassionate and unanimous legal judgment, however, it should be clear that the president’s dismissal was a natural and appropriate response to his actions.
In the coming presidential election, Lee Jae-myung, who is expected to be the Democratic Party candidate from the progressive camp, is the frontrunner. The conservative camp is split over the issue of impeaching an incumbent president, and it remains a question whether it can repair this split and choose a candidate for the presidency. Conservatives face a difficult challenge achieving party unity in the general election less than a month after the party’s primary.
In Japan, a great deal of attention is focused on the direction that South Korean foreign policy will take. After all, the change from Moon Jae-in’s progressive administration to Yoon’s conservative administration produced a major shift in South Korean foreign policy, and there is concern that this shift will be reversed if a progressive government returns to power.
The relationship between Japan under its former Prime Minister Abe Shinzo and South Korea under the Moon administration was very tense. While the direct cause of tensions was rooted in historical issues that have existed between Japan and Korea for many years, there was also a divergence in foreign policies, which amplified the distrust shared by the neighbors.
There are a number of points of contention, including whether the emphasis in South Korean policy toward North Korea will be on engagement or deterrence; whether South Korea will maintain a policy of “strategic ambiguity,” leaning towards neither the U.S. nor China in the face of confrontation between those two countries; whether South Korea will cooperate with like-minded countries and persuade the U.S. to share the concept of the “Indo-Pacific” in order to maintain U.S. involvement; and whether South Korea will maintain a cautious stance with regard to trilateral security cooperation with Japan and the U.S. (given its particularly complex relationship with Japan), or whether it will actively promote this cooperation, including its institutionalization. The policy choices of the Yoon administration were much more compatible with Tokyo’s position, and as a consequence relations between Japan and South Korea improved dramatically.
South Korea’s early political history was dominated by its staunch opposition to communism, and there was relatively little domestic conflict over policy issues, especially when it came to foreign policy. Today, however, the conservative and progressive camps are in extreme opposition, as very clearly evidenced with the recent impeachment. This has encouraged the parties to put an excessive emphasis on the relatively few foreign policy differences that had existed previously. The question now is whether a new administration will be able to move beyond this polarization and choose a foreign policy that will satisfy both sides.
There is no doubt that the international situation surrounding South Korea and the Korean Peninsula has changed dramatically since 2018, when Moon was in power. North Korea, which had previously expressed its openness to denuclearization, has not only abandoned that idea, but has also changed course entirely toward a North Korean version of the “Two Koreas” policy, abandoning even the goal of unification that it had once shared with South Korea. In addition, the confrontation between the U.S. and China has now entered a different dimension, moving into areas such as the economy and technology. This vastly changed situation offers no grounds for pursuing a Moon-era foreign policy.
The next South Korean administration should view staying the course with Yoon’s foreign policy as a basic principle. In particular, with the second inauguration of Donald Trump, the United States itself – always a key factor in the equation – is clearly basing its tariff and other policies on an America First approach, disregarding alliances. Russia and North Korea are meanwhile stepping up their military cooperation in the former’s lawless invasion of Ukraine, while China shows no signs of making an active contribution to maintaining a just and peaceful order.
In this context, the roles that Japan and South Korea play in providing international public goods that contribute to the formation of a fair and peaceful international order are more important than ever before. That calls for Yoon’s legacy put to be to good use in the foreign policy realm.
There is no question that Yoon’s declaration of martial law was illegal and warranted his removal from office. It is not hard to understand why some would be inclined to reverse his policies in their entirety. Nonetheless, his administration’s foreign policy – and particularly its realistic recognition of the turbulent international situation and its appropriate response based on that recognition – was effective. While foreign policy is unlikely to play a major role in the election campaign, the choices before the South Korean people should at the very least be carefully considered.