Commentary: Trump’s biggest impact in East Asia will be in Korea

BUSAN: Former American president Donald Trump has won the presidency again. He will return to the White House in 2025 with a popular vote majority and sympathetic Congress behind him. With this backing, Trump will have even greater freedom in shaping US foreign policy.

While this will be felt most immediately in Europe, where Trump clearly plans to cut off US aid to Ukraine, the most unexpected impact could be in Korea.

In his first presidential term, Trump evinced a visceral dislike for South Korea. Of all of America’s many allies, Trump seemed to have a special ire for South Korea.

He loathed its president at the time, Moon Jae-In (according to books written by former Trump national security officials) and was vocal about his dislike of South Korea. For example, he threatened to “blow up” the US-South Korea alliance if he won re-election in 2020. He complained that US-South Korean military exercises were too costly, and he said South Koreans were “terrible people”.

Conversely, Trump has a known affinity for autocrats and forged a curious “bromance” with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. Trump spoke approvingly of Kim’s aides jumping to their feet when Kim entered a room. He famously said he and Kim “fell in love”.

During his time in office, Trump held two high-profile summits with Kim, although both failed to yield any sort of meaningful progress toward denuclearisation.

Trump will likely try to resume his relationship with Kim in his second term.

This sets up a situation where the United States favours a dictatorship over a treaty ally in its foreign policy. That would be a shift more remarkable than the coming abandonment of Ukraine, which is not a formal US ally.

Trump also has a long history of demanding US allies pay for American security guarantees. He has been particularly extreme regarding South Korea. Just last month, he described South Korea as a “money machine”, saying he wants to multiply by nine times the cost of stationing US troops in South Korea.

Where NATO allies can collectively grapple with Trump’s demands, South Korea’s position is much tougher. It is isolated in northeast Asia. It faces three nuclear autocracies on its doorstep, and its relations with Japan are poor (because of historical grievances dating to Japanese imperialism during World War II). It stands alone against Trump should he act as he did in his last presidency.

This could easily provoke an alliance crisis. Pro-alliance South Korean conservatives might be willing to accede to Trump’s huge financial demand to prevent an alliance fallout. But the public blowback would be intense, and the South Korean left, which is currently in opposition, would use it to pummel the government as weak and craven. The approval rating of South Korea’s current, conservative president, Yoon Suk Yeol, is at an all-time low of just 19 per cent, meaning he likely lacks the public support to appease Trump.

THE SOUTH KOREAN NUCLEAR OPTION

One alternative is for South Korea to draw distance from the United States and “self-insure” via its own nuclear weapons. There is already a substantial debate in South Korea over this step. Public opinion has robustly supported nuclearisation for 15 years. The real block has been elite anxiety. There is fear over the Chinese and American response.

But with Trump in charge, American resistance is less important, because the US nuclear guarantee to South Korea is far less credible. South Korea has desisted from nuclearising, because the US has intensively signalled during the administration of current President Joseph Biden that it would fight for South Korea despite North Korea’s nuclear weapons. This commitment is far less believable now.

Trump will almost certainly not carry military costs for them. And he definitely will not carry nuclear risk to the US homeland for them. In 1961, French president Charles de Gaulle famously asked US president John Kennedy if he would “sacrifice New York for Paris”. In other words, would Kennedy risk Soviet nuclear retaliation on US cities to fight for Europe? Today, South Korean newspapers regularly ask if the US will risk San Francisco for Seoul. Under Biden, the answer might have been “maybe”; under Trump, the answer is almost definitely “no”.

In short, if Trump will not fight for South Korea, and if he demands a huge protection fee too, then the argument for South Korea to go its own way grows dramatically. Indigenous nuclear weapons is the obvious replacement for a decaying US nuclear security commitment.

CAN YOON FORGE “GOOD CHEMISTRY” WITH TRUMP?

There is no evidence that Trump’s views on North and South Korea have changed since his first term. But there is also a chance that Trump will simply ignore Korea to focus on other matters, such as the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East. Trump’s unpredictable style brings uncertainty to all US foreign policy ventures. The next four years will be a challenge for all US partners.

For now at least, Seoul appears to be staying optimistic. After Trump’s victory last week, Yoon spoke to the president-elect for 12 minutes, during which the pair agreed to arrange an in-person meeting soon. Trump expressed the need to continue “good cooperative relations”.

Yoon said in a televised press conference after the phone call that he expects to have "good chemistry" with Trump and doesn’t foresee “any major issues” in working together.

Trump has long personalised foreign policy. He understands it as friendships among leaders rather than the play of strategic interests. Hence Yoon’s effort to cultivate Trump directly. If Yoon can flatter Trump enough, perhaps he can derail the fights Trump picked with Yoon’s predecessor before they arise.

Robert Kelly (@Robert_E_Kelly) is a professor of political science at Pusan National University.