SEOUL -- South Korean President Moon Jae-in's foreign policy toward the United States is at a crossroads.
North Korea -- seeking economic sanctions relief -- has been pulling various levers to pressure South Korea to distance itself from the United States, even as the South tries to strike a balance between its alliance with the United States and its efforts toward reconciliation with the North.
As the confrontation between the United States and China has also become more serious, policy differences between South Korea and the United States toward China have also become a source of instability for the South Korea-U.S. alliance.
-- Different position
In a speech at a ceremony on Thursday, the 70th anniversary of the 1950 outbreak of the Korean War, Moon had a message for North Korea: "Before speaking of unification, I hope that we can become friendly neighbors first."
Stressing the need for bilateral dialogue, the speech reflected Moon's struggle to keep up momentum for reconciliation between the Koreas. As for the United States, with which South Korea formed an alliance after the war's 1953 cease-fire, Moon briefly touched on "the steadfast ROK-U.S. alliance."
Former U.S. National Security Adviser John Bolton wrote in his memoir, published Tuesday, that U.S. President Donald Trump had been concerned about differences in positions with Moon in the process of the U.S.-North Korea talks since 2018. Trump feared that Moon, who takes a conciliatory line with North Korea, might easily compromise on denuclearization issues.
In fact, Moon obtained a promise from North Korea during a North-South summit in September 2018 that it would dismantle its Yongbyon nuclear complex, but Trump refused to lift economic sanctions on North Korea during the U.S.-North Korea summit meeting in February 2019, saying that dismantling Yongbyon alone was not enough. As the result, talks on denuclearization have stalled.
-- Calculations
"I also deeply regret that relations not only between the two Koreas but also between North Korea and the United States have not advanced as much as we had expected," Moon said in a speech on June 15. He urged North Korea to be patient.
However, the day after the speech, North Korea literally blew up an inter-Korean liaison office. Pyongyang is believed to be trying to hurry Moon -- who has less than two years left in his term -- to ease economic sanctions against North Korea, as well as to realize inter-Korean economic cooperation.
Criticizing the Moon administration as "pro-America," North Korea is warning that North-South dialogue cannot be resumed unless Seoul draws a sharp line separating itself from Washington.
Pyongyang also seems to calculate that the Moon administration's conciliatory stance will not change even if it takes provocative action. This comes from the idea that South Korea's 1980s pro-democracy generation -- the Moon administration's support base -- believes that the United States long supported South Korea's former dictatorship, hindering the unification of the two Koreas. Based on this idea, this generation has strong distrust of the United States and sympathy for North Korea.
-- U.S.-China conflict
The Moon administration is expected to try to persuade the United States to accept an early realization of North-South economic cooperation. But, it will not be easy to reach a breakthrough when negotiations over sharing the costs of stationing U.S. forces in South Korea have had rough going.
Amid such circumstances, China, which has shown sympathy toward the idea of easing sanctions, is expected to play a key role. South Korea plans to realize a visit by Chinese President Xi Jinping by the end of this year to promote China-South Korea cooperation.
However, after September, a Group of Seven summit meeting will be held to which Trump has said that he would invite South Korea, Australia and other countries, with an eye toward building a China-encircling network.
Some observers say China, wary of such moves, will use Xi's visit to South Korea as a bargaining chip to urge South Korea to lower the pressure on China at the G7 meeting.
A diplomatic source from one of the G7 member countries said, "Both China's participation in the G7 summit and Xi's visit to South Korea will be important events for the Moon administration to show results, but it will not be easy to satisfy both."
Read more from The Japan News at https://japannews.yomiuri.co.jp/
