While U. Some U. Others believe that North Korea must take the first steps to show that it is serious about denuclearization before a genuine step-by-step diplomatic process can begin. These balancing interests and perspectives among progressives in the United States often result in a complicated and nuanced approach to the question of how best to conduct diplomacy with North Korea.
Beyond North Korea, many U. South Korea is one of the few countries that went from being a recipient of development assistance to a donor of its own. It has transitioned from an autocracy to a flourishing democracy. It has made great strides in education and economic development and set an example for the world with its COVID response.
South Korean conservatives are more likely to welcome the idea of becoming a well-established middle power, while South Korean progressives believe the North Korean security challenge must take priority.
As part of U. The two countries are both economic powerhouses that face similar security concerns and are close allies of the United States. China has perpetrated a vast incarceration of Uighur Muslims, cracked down violently on pro-democracy movements in Hong Kong, and militarized outposts in the South China Sea, among a variety of other concerning actions. With its destabilizing behavior, many policymakers across the political spectrum in the United States increasingly view China as a top challenge.
Trump has pursued an erratic China policy that has veered wildly between courting President Xi Jinping and confronting China with pressure. They are willing to actively pursue steps such as joint economic projects and humanitarian assistance as confidence-building measures, while simultaneously addressing threat reduction and denuclearization. Nevertheless, most South Korean progressives contend that Kim Jong Un was serious about reducing tensions and improving relations in the most recent round of diplomacy.
Others predict that Kim may have been motivated to pursue stronger relations with the United States and South Korea to balance against Chinese geopolitical influence. Instead, South Korean progressives increasingly view the United States as the obstacle to advancing inter-Korean relations. Some even advocate for a rebalancing of the U. While South Korean progressives perceive U. South Korean progressives assert that the United States often sets the bar for diplomacy too high.
They contend that denuclearization should be a long-term goal and that tangible progress toward denuclearization cannot happen without painstaking efforts to relieve the 70 years of hostility and tension between the United States and the DPRK. But as U. As a bipartisan consensus emerges from Washington that a tougher approach to China is necessary, many South Korean progressives are concerned that denuclearization and peace on the Korean Peninsula will become less of a priority.
The Center for American Progress noted in its report the importance of this issue in shaping perspectives in South Korea, and it remains even more relevant today. In , after continual missile testing from the North, U. But in the eyes of some South Korean progressive policymakers, the United States had failed to do enough to support its ally in its time of need.
Others pointed out that it was difficult for the U. Recent polling from the Asan Institute for Policy Studies notes that both the United States and China hit record-low favorability ratings in South Korea; but when presented as a binary choice, the South Korean public drastically favored the United States to China. South Korean progressives also prefer to work with the United States over China as the two allies share common values and interests. While South Korean progressives share many concerns with U.
South Korean progressives worry that the increasing U. While Washington argues that Japan and South Korea share similar security threats from North Korea and the same values, some South Korean progressives view these efforts as forcing the two countries to get along for the sake of U. South Korea and Japan have an unresolved colonial past that bleeds into their economic and security cooperation.
However, there is great resentment among South Korean progressives toward President Obama for this chain of events. The comfort women agreement was not something widely supported by South Korean progressives and remains unpopular among the South Korean public. Some South Korean progressives contend that the United States is stalling on operational control OPCON transfer conditions because it does not want to return operational wartime control to Seoul during rising tensions with China.
While not all of these are commonly held beliefs, the overarching narrative is there: While South Korean progressives are largely supportive of America and the alliance, many feel that their interests are not being heard and that they are but a chess piece in U. As begins, both the United States and South Korea—including progressives on both sides—have work to do to strengthen the alliance and bridge the trust divide.
Over the next year, the alliance should focus on a handful of concrete policy initiatives that can advance shared interests, while also addressing some of the underlying disagreements identified above. For example, the Moon administration supported an end of war declaration as a way to boost peace efforts, while the Trump administration clearly did not agree.
Outlining key milestones for the way forward would help relieve tensions and manage expectations between the two allies, present a united posture toward North Korea, and make diplomacy far more likely to yield progress. This road map should include an agreement on the types of concessions and demands—such as the terms for an end of war declaration—as well as a consensus on how to sequence the process of talks and short- and long-term goals for both parties.
All of these decisions must, of course, consider the commitments that South Korea has already made to North Korea in the Panmunjom and Pyongyang Declarations. The United States should seek to establish a regular channel of engagement with North Korea—beyond the New York channel available through the United Nations—which should include a new liaison office if circumstances permit it.
Improving formal communication between both sides is an important first step toward achieving U. The opening of liaison offices was one of the items reportedly ready to be announced as part of the agreement that was almost reached in Hanoi, 61 indicating that it is possible to achieve and likely has support from constituencies within both governments.
Opening an actual liaison office quickly might be difficult: Amid the pandemic, North Korea has cut off most foreign contact and sent many diplomats home; 62 Pyongyang also blew up the existing inter-Korean liaison office in an attempt to express anger at the inability of the diplomatic process to yield the results it wanted.
The alliance should step up multilateral assistance to programs and institutions that are already operating in North Korea to address challenges exacerbated by COVID If successful, this initiative could eventually be broadened into a dialogue with the DPRK and other regional partners on pandemic response and public health, an idea that President Moon proposed during his U.
As the United States and South Korea hold somewhat divergent views on how much of a role the alliance should play in regional and global issues beyond the peninsula, would be a good time to try a new initiative that could meet the expectations of both countries.
To start, the two allies should establish a series of priorities for the alliance to tackle in terms of building public health capacity—such as strengthening the World Health Organization WHO , ensuring fair vaccine distribution, sharing pandemic-related lessons, and providing public health assistance to developing countries.
China looms large over many aspects of the U. The first step that the United States needs to take is to formulate and articulate a clear, comprehensive China strategy. While perhaps a relatively obvious task, over the past few years the United States has lacked a coordinated and consistent approach, which is part of the reason that U. As a part of developing a strategy, the United States must consult with South Korea and seek out a variety of different perspectives, including those of progressives.
While tasks such as developing a strategy in consultation with allies should be the very foundation of a strong alliance, they have been largely ignored in recent years, and there is tremendous work to do. Some policymakers, regardless of their political leanings, believe the U. This was part of the conversation over the past few years, as Trump repeatedly suggested that reducing U.
The way in which Trump made these suggestions—and the way in which he canceled U. The key issue that both sides need to keep in mind when it comes to force posture is the alliance has shared goals—and the U.
The United States and South Korea must ensure that any force posture discussions—about military exercises, troop levels, or the deployment of weapons systems—happen within the broader context of alliance goals. The number of U. People that it hit would be just dead, burnt, dead. One time, our airstrikes hit [one of our units] and destroyed almost half of them by mistake.
Bruce Cumings argued that the war was not worth the amount of civilian blood spilled. When napalm hit the South Korean village of Danyang, families who had escaped other attacks were clustered together in a cave. It was a pitch-black chaos — people shouting for each other, stampeding, choking. Some said we should crawl in deeper, covering our faces with wet cloth.
Some said we should rush through the blaze. Those who were not burned to death suffocated. Because each side endured so much pain, suffering and death, it is natural that many Koreans harbor deep resentment toward Americans, and that many Americans view their North Korean and Chinese foes as cruel and subhuman. But the war did accomplish something remarkable that many historians overlook.
Though the war ended in a stalemate, and though the peninsula did not reunite as one unified country, South Korea emerged with its own democratic government and an alliance with the United States.
That alliance only became stronger over the years and endures to this day.
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