South Korea faces the mounting threat of North Korea using nuclear weapons as the two countries enter a “new Cold War,” the chair of Seoul National University’s security research center said Friday.
Kim Jong-Un is bent on the survival of the North Korean regime at all costs, with the North Korean leader describing the current tensions asa new Cold War, Chaesung Chun said during a Friday Brookings Institution event.
The two panels at the Brookings Institution event repeatedly expressed concern about facing another four years of “transactional relationships” replacing the relative stability of the Biden administration’s “latticework” of multilateral relations from Japan and Korea in the north to Australia and New Zealand in the south.
The emphasis in the Biden administration was on dealing with the rising China diplomatically, and economically and protecting national sovereignty in the region the chair, Chun said.
“Top-down level negotiations” between Trump and Kim, as occurred during his first presidential term, carry great risk not only for Korea, but Japan and others, Chun added.
Before any new talks between Trump and Kim begin, there needs to be “a consensus on general security cooperation” between Seoul and Washington, Chun said, adding these possible new rounds of negotiations between Trump and Kim should be “long and painful” and involved “more than missiles and nuclear weapons.”
“Deal-making could undermine South Korean security” without that consensus, Sang-yoon Ma, professor of international relations at Korea’s Catholic University, said. He added even if the incoming administration “took a bystander approach” to relationships in north Asia, it could have an impact on South Korean security.
Andrew Yeo, senior fellow at the Center for Asia Policy Studies, added Trump “may make life more difficult for alliances” beyond those with Korea and Japan.
Trump regards Taiwan, which does not have a formal security treaty with the United States, as being “really far away from the United States” and not in its immediate interest, said Ryan Hess, director of the John L. Thornton China Center at Brookings. During the campaign the president-elect called on Taipei to spend more of its own defense. He also complained often about Taiwan’s dominance of the microchip industry.
Hess added members of the administration do not share that view. Sen. Marco Rubio, (R-Fla.) and Rep. Mike Waltz, (R-Fla.) “are very passionate” about Taiwan’s survival. Rubio will be nominated to be secretary of state and Waltz as the national security advisor when the administration takes office Jan. 20.
While Seoul completed negotiations last month with the United States on burden-sharing, the question of whether it will survive to 2030 are already being raised.
The new agreement between Washington and Seoul raises Korea’s share by more than 8 percent in 2026, or $1.47 billion.
Japan is to begin its talks with Washington on burden-sharing next year.
In 2019, Trump called on Japan to quadruple its spending on the Special Measures Agreement that covers part of the expense of stationing American forces in the two treaty partners’ territory.
Ma and others said this growing uncertainty over future relations with Washington is also raising questions about relying on the United States’ “nuclear umbrella” to deter Pyongyang or Beijing from attacking.
“Without America’s nuclear umbrella, South Korea may not be secure,” Ma said.
A possibility is “we may develop our own” nuclear weapons, Ma added.
Also troubling to Asian nation is the impact of higher tariffs on their exports to the United States.
“We already have some sense of what follows … trade war,” particularly between China and the United States, Mireya Solis, Brookings director of Asia Policy Studies, said.
Trump wants to impose 10 percent tariffs on all Chinese imports.
She added the Biden administration kept in place a number of the tariffs the first Trump administration placed on Beijing. A “trade war” and tariffs imposed on their own exports would have an impact on Japan and Korea, as well as Southeast Asia.
