While the world reorders, Korea dithers

Park Jung-won

What kind of world do we now find ourselves in? The map may look the same, yet the world order that underlies it is transforming. Venezuela’s President Nicolás Maduro was seized in a U.S. military operation. After a failed attempt to “purchase” Greenland, America floated the possibility of annexing the vast island, owned by Denmark, by force. Attempts to negotiate a lasting end to the war in Ukraine floundered amid divisions between Western allies. And pro-democracy protests in Iran were met by state violence that could provoke an international response. As all these events unfolded, the silence of international organizations became hard to ignore. What has vanished is not order itself, but the responsibility and restraint of those who once upheld it.

Many describe the present moment as an era in which international law has “disappeared.” But international law has not gone anywhere. What has disappeared is not the norms but the will that made the norms operative. International law does not run on its own. It functions only when leaders assume responsibility, when institutions adhere to procedure and when citizens display civic maturity. The crisis today is not a crisis of international law, but a crisis in the preconditions that make international law possible.

In the past, the United States appealed to “values” in international politics. Though it may have been selective, opportunistic or hypocritical in carrying out its foreign policies, its general promotion of democracy, liberty and human rights has shaped alliances. President Donald Trump did not seize Maduro in the name of democracy. His calculus began with Venezuela’s vast oil reserves, and he made no effort to conceal it.

The Greenland affair was not merely an eccentric outburst of a mercurial leader. Trump does not represent America’s long-term strategy or its democratic conscience, but because he occupies the office of “President of the United States,” his words project directly into international reality. Europe was stunned, showing cracks in the NATO alliance, and Russia smiled, sensing opportunity. Yet what followed was more telling: The political backlash and sharp reaction by financial markets soon forced Trump to step back, as he later revealed during his visit to the World Economic Forum in Davos. American power remains overwhelming, but its diplomatic language is no longer a consistent language of values; it has become a language of transactional costs and benefits.

Iran offers another extreme. Citizens there demanded democracy and took to the streets; the state responded with guns. Protesters were beaten and killed. Washington did move — this time through a far more visible and substantial military deployment, including carrier strike groups capable of sustained operations, while publicly signaling the possibility of limited strikes against Iranian leadership. Trump even warned that the United States would not stand idle if the regime continued its repression. Yet the purpose of this posture remained unclear. It appeared more probing than committed, as Washington tested how far pressure could be applied without triggering a broader conflict or binding itself to a political end state.

Neither the United Nations nor Europe nor the International Criminal Court moved. International law did not operate as a shield for civilians. It operated, instead, as a framework that prioritized state sovereignty over the protection of citizens, even when that sovereignty was exercised through violence.

The war in Ukraine began with a blatant violation of international law by Russia. The foundations of the international legal order — territorial integrity and the prohibition on the use of force — were breached, and European stability was shaken. The war became — and remains — a space where international law and democracy are put on trial.

Yet Trump treated it not as a matter of justice but as a transaction. He boasted that he could end the conflict “in a day” if elected, and urged Ukraine to make concessions to Russia. When values are converted into costs and alliances are treated as items of trade, democracy loses ground. Across the Atlantic, the gap between principle and transaction has grown wider than at any point in recent memory.

Where, then, does Korea stand? Korea sits at a geopolitical crossroads. Its national survival is threatened the moment the American security guarantee weakens. Washington’s latest National Defense Strategy, however, makes clear that the North Korean threat is to be handled primarily by Seoul. The document offers no assurance on the credibility of America’s nuclear umbrella, leaving Korea exposed to a strategic gap that it cannot fill on its own. A normal state in such a position would survive by calculation, not sentiment. Instead, Korea’s leadership remains trapped in the language of wishful thinking.

In his New Year’s press conference, President Lee Jae Myung noted that North Korea would never give up its nuclear weapons. He was right. The problem was what followed. He proposed a sequence — nuclear freeze followed by denuclearization — without a strategy or timeline, and then asked, “What do you expect us to do when North Korea already has nuclear weapons?” Is this the language of a leader responsible for national security?

The remark reveals something deeper: Korean politics has shown no willingness to confront how this nuclear reality was produced. Neither previous nor current leaders, on either side of the political spectrum, have examined how North Korea policy failed and led to the current predicament. Instead, each camp continues to live in its own dream. Whether North Korea is demonized or romanticized, the reality is the same: It is a nuclear-armed state. All that remains is a vague hope that North Korea will one day give up its weapons in an act of goodwill. Can this be called policy? More disturbing still is the relative absence of sustained public debate, as attention is absorbed by domestic political disputes while the existential threat from the north fades from view.

The international order is being restitched amid chaos, and a new balance will eventually settle into place. The question is whether Korea will secure its place within that order or find itself left outside. The geopolitical clock is ticking.

Park Jung-won (park_jungwon@hotmail.com), Ph.D. in law from the London School of Economics (LSE), is a professor of international law at Dankook University.