Update: Some timely comments on the problem of Roh and the effect on the U.S.-ROK alliance.

Original post: The Brookings Institution North Korea page has a new paper (h/t Kevin) on U.S.-ROK relations, “Looking Back and Looking Forward: North Korea, Northeast Asia and the ROK-U.S. Alliance,” (full paper-PDF) by Dr. Park Hyeong-jung, a Senior Fellow at the Korean Institute for National Unification, who was a visiting fellow in the Brookings’ Center for Northeast Asian Policy Studies (CNAPS), 2006-2007. Dr. Park’s work at Brookings was supported in part by the Korea Foundation. The paper covers a wide range of alliance related topics, including anti-Americanism, North Korea policy, and military relations.

This line from the introduction gives away the author’s point of view:

The Bush administration’s mismanagement ignited a surge of anti-Americanism in South Korea, which in turn led to a round of Korea-bashing in the United States.

In the first 20 or so pages there are many such comments that are easy to argue with. For example:

One of the central questions in reviewing ROK-U.S. dissonances in 2002-2006 is how to understand the surge of anti-American sentiment in South Korea from 2002 to 2004. In fact, there have been five competing paradigms in explaining this phenomenon. Depending on which paradigm is accepted, analysis about past relations as well as suggestions for the future will be different. The surge of anti-American sentiment can be seen as a result of various catalysts: that it was purely accidental, caused by societal changes in South Korea, was an eruption of South Korea’s accumulated grievances against the United States, was an outcome of the Sunshine Policy, or that it was a consequence of the Bush administration’s North Korea policy.

[...]

In the third paradigm, the central sources of anti-American sentiment are the “accumulated grievances”3 toward the United States’s role in South Korea since the brutal suppression of a popular uprising in the southwestern city of Kwangju in May of 1980. The United States’ “long-term support for dictatorship, the Kwangju Rebellion, the Korean financial crisis, and the changing perception of military (in)security provided by the United States since the crisis of 1993-94.”4 … In this thinking, the United States is at fault for the downturn in relations. (page 4)

My main contention here is that the ROK government’s response to the Kwangju Uprising (광주 사태) is widely – and erroneously – perceived by Koreans as having been supported by the U.S. government. Likewise, the financial crisis of the late 1990s, often referred to in Korea as the “IMF crisis,” was not caused or exacerbated by the U.S. The author should note and clarify in those two cases that those are perceptions by South Koreans, rather than facts (e.g., the U.S. supported ROK dictators, etc.).

With this more widely held assessment, however, I believe the author hits the nail on the head, though I would say it was the blind implementation of the Sunshine Policy that eventually grew to ignore the basic tenants of its foundation that helped widen the divide. :

According to the fourth paradigm, the origin of early 2000s anti-Americanism dates back to June 2000, following the inter-Korean summit between then-President Kim Dae Jung and the North Korean leader, Kim Jong Il. The summit led to a rise in nationalistic feeling and helped fuel the perception that the United States played the role of an “impeder” of inter-Korean reconciliation,5 and the that the two Koreas would be able to tackle their problems “independently.”6 This sentiment “provided the basis on which U.S. Forces Korea (USFK)-related incidents received worse reactions from the South Korean population than expected.”7 In this logic, consequences of the Sunshine Policy helped create anti-American sentiment.

Why blame Kim Jong-il or Roh Moo-hyun for their actions when you can blame, at least in part, President Bush’s policy?:

Ironically and unintentionally, the Bush administration’s neo-conservative North Korea policy contributed to President Roh’s determination to continue with the Sunshine Policy.

There are also statements like the next one, which is in my opinion completely accurate, that offer a chance to mock the bizarre and ultimately failed approach of the Roh administration in dealing with North Korea:

On the inter-Korean front, despite North Korea’s declaration of possession nuclear weapons, South Korea decided in early 2005 to expand exchange with North Korea, especially economic cooperation (assistance) as a way to increase leverage upon it to give up nuclear its weapons. (page 10)

Yes, that’s right, North Korea wasn’t coopering or following agreements it had made in the past, so Roh decided to throw cash at them as a way to “increase leverage.” Surprisingly, North Korea took the aid and funds, but still went on to test a nuclear weapon in October 2006.

The following passages offer a stark contrast to how Americans and South Koreans view the breakdown of the alliance over the past few years:

Looking back on the difficult relationship between South Korea and the United States from 2001 to 2006, both accidental and structural factors are apparent. Acknowledging that South Korea, a regional middle power, and the United States, a global superpower, cannot but have different sets of interests does not sufficiently explain why the relationship deteriorated so far. (page 22)

True enough, but. . .

The purpose of the Bush administration’s foreign policy has been to establish a hegemonic international order of “imperial characteristics,” which is an international order “built around unilateralism, coercive domination, and a reduced commitment to shared commitment to mutually agreeable rule of the game.” . . . South Korea suffered the most under the policy difference with the United States. In fact, the degree and impact of South Korea’s alienation from the United States is probably behind only the three countries of ‘axis of evil,’ Iraq, Iran and North Korea, because of its strategic importance in confronting North Korea’s nuclear weapons development and in countering the only long-term strategic rival to the U.S., China. (page 22-23)

Above the author shows a skewed and somewhat paranoid worldview and misunderstanding of U.S. policy. This blames the breakdown in U.S.-ROK relations, again, on Bush’s policy rather than the policies and actions of Roh Moo-hyun (Recent examples include the exchange between Bush and Roh in Sydney, Australia, and some creative, but unconvincing revisionism. Also see the, “Death of an Alliance” series of posts at OneFreeKorea.).

Dr. Park outlines a “three track strategy” for the U.S. in dealing with the North Korean nuclear issue:

[T]he first track is that America should maintain the lead in negotiations with North Korea for its denuclearization, while “do(ing) everything (it) possibly can that doesn’t compromise (its) security to make it impossible for the North Koreans to get on the moral high ground.”101 The purpose of the first track is to make it politically and morally compelling for South Korea and China to support the American diplomatic lead in denuclearization, while isolating North Korea politically and morally when it hesitates or refuses to cooperate during the denuclearization negotiation process.

If the U.S. setup concentration camps for illegal aliens and began incinerating them, it wouldn’t even begin to give North Korea the moral high ground. He then goes on to quote Jack Pritchard with the equally useless advice to, “to accept the current North Korean regime as it is,” which would in reality be (at the time of the quote) a country that was bend on achieving nuclear arms while at the same time making deals, accepting aid, and reneging without exception.

The “second track” speaks to regional cooperation in dealing with North Korea, while the “third track” touches on a U.S. role for Korean reunification:

The third track is for the United States to play a role of “promoter” in expanding inter-Korean relations and “facilitator” for Korean unification. This strategic path will promote the following two purposes: first, only through the successful resolution of various issues between the two Koreas by their own principal initiatives, and through inter-Korean reconciliation will it be possible to achieve permanent peace on the Korean peninsula and thereby eliminate a major factor for strategic mistrust and disturbance in Northeast Asian international relations; and second, ROK-U.S. cooperation on North Korea policy will be best served when it is made clear that progress in inter-Korean relations, U.S.-DPRK relations and denuclearization should go parallel and not conflict with the others.

This is not very realistic as South Korea is only paying lip service to wanting to reunify due to the massive costs, while North Korean leadership would be mortified at the prospect of reunification.

The paper then discusses the U.S. role as an economic and security stabilizer in East Asia:

The first point is related to the initial strategic bargain between South Korea and the United States: “economics for security.” The alliance has, on one hand, supplied South Korea with privileged access to the U.S. market, and on the other, obligated South Korea to participate in an asymmetric security alliance favoring and led by the U.S. With the deepening globalization and opening of the Chinese market, however, the economic benefit of the alliance has diminished, and North Korea’s conventional war capacity, which has legitimized asymmetrical military alliance, has also declined. With this development, it has been more than natural that many in Seoul began finding “inequality” in their relations with the United States and started to diversify their foreign relations.

[…]

The second point is related to the unequal status of Japan and South Korea in the U.S. alliance system [which] offered special precedence to Japan in terms of both economic opportunities and security obligations. The purpose of the ROK-U.S. military alliance was to protect and enrich South Korea but also, to contribute to the enrichment and stability of Japan.107 The magnitude of inequality has increased in the post-Cold War period and may increase in the future, because the relative importance of the two U.S.-led alliances has changed to the detriment of the ROK-U.S.

These first two points essentially whine about the alliance favoring the U.S. and South Korea’s unequal status relative to Japan. This doesn’t touch on the role of the Roh Moo-hyun administration in actively destroying the alliance (again see OneFreeKorea’s “Death of an Alliance” series of posts, this on Roh and wartime command, and this overwhelming negative reaction by South Korea’s former generals, defense ministers, diplomats, and police).

The third point is related to the stabilizing role of the U.S. alliance system in Northeast Asia, which again has been weighted toward Japan.113 First, the U.S.-Japan alliance solved Japan’s security problems, allowing it to forgo building up its military capabilities; second, it has served to solve or reduce the security dilemmas that would surface within the region if Japan were to re-arm and become a more autonomous and unrestrained military power. Besides both South Korea and China having positively assessed this stabilizing function of the U.S.-Japan alliance, the United States took advantage of its strong relations with both Korea and Japan to maintain functional relations. 114 This benign attitude of South Korea and China to the U.S.-Japan alliance changed into a more or less suspicious one, as Japan increased its military capacity and became active and assertive in security policy,115 though the future direction of its strategic intentions remains unclear. … Considering Japan’s relative importance to and stronger influence on the United States, it is legitimate for South Korea to worry about America’s structural bias toward Japan. Seoul therefore increased its pursuit of independence as the United States and Japan failed to “strike a delicate balance – satisfying American requests for Japan to become a more active player in regional security while assuaging concerns in key East Asian countries that a greater strategic role for Japan does not pose a threat to their national security.”116

Again, this fails to address the role of the Roh administration is rejecting the U.S.-ROK alliance, and also does not touch on the stabilizing role that U.S. forces play by being in South Korea, arguably just as or more important than the presence in Japan (more here).

My comments on this paper range from quibbles to fundamental flaws in understanding, or at least presenting, both details and the big picture in East Asia (especially in regard to U.S. intent, North Korean engagement, and the effects of the Roh administration), and this covers only about half the paper. While Dr. Park makes many good points and observations, reading this paper is much like reading a Bruce Cumings book; you have to fact check just about every detail given, as well as check for the rest of the story to see what was omitted.