Trump-Kim deal at South Korea's expense?

Washington voiced displeasure; Seoul responded with respect. Few scenes better capture the disconnect in the U.S.-South Korea alliance.

President Donald Trump ordered a major reduction in joint U.S.-South Korea military drills, saying they cost too much and send a hostile signal to North Korea. He made no secret of his displeasure with South Korea for not supporting U.S. military action against Iran. Yet he spoke warmly of Kim Jong-un and said he wanted to meet him this year.

Seoul’s response was unexpected. President Lee Jae Myung praised Trump’s decision as an effort for peace on the Korean Peninsula and expressed his “respect.” Days earlier, Lee had stressed self-reliant defense, citing South Korea’s world-class military and defense industry, while vowing to regain wartime operational control within his term.

Pyongyang seized on the contradiction. The North Korean leader's sister, Kim Yo-jong, mocked Seoul for claiming ample capacity to defend itself while scaling back joint exercises at Trump’s word. She also called Seoul’s attempt to alter a Northeast Asian balance shaped by nuclear powers an anachronistic delusion.

Her taunts are uncomfortable because they are difficult to rebut on the facts alone. Criticism from the other side hurts most not when it lies, but when it accurately exposes our contradictions.

Media attention is already turning to a possible fourth Trump-Kim summit. But Kim today is not the Kim of 2018-19. His nuclear arsenal is larger and ties with Russia deeper. He has little reason to rush. Kim can wait. Trump has more reason to seek a dramatic encounter. Facing trouble at home, another meeting with Kim could provide a foreign policy spectacle. But Trump has been better at creating dramatic moments than durable settlements. For Kim, meanwhile, meeting an American president without surrendering his arsenal is itself a political asset.

Trump recently put North Korea’s arsenal at 57 nuclear weapons; Seoul estimates 80 to 120. More important than the numbers is the language of the American president. North Korea’s nuclear arsenal is beginning to move from something to be eliminated to a reality to be managed. North Korea is not a legally recognized nuclear weapon state. Yet if a U.S. president treats its arsenal as a given and negotiates risk reduction or arms control, its nuclear possession could gain de facto acceptance without formal legal recognition.

That is South Korea’s fundamental danger. Washington’s first concern is North Korean nuclear weapons capable of striking the U.S. homeland. If a deal reduces that threat while effectively tolerating Pyongyang’s existing arsenal, both Trump and Kim can declare victory.

What does South Korea get?

If North Korea retains the nuclear forces threatening Seoul, a successful agreement for Washington becomes a disastrous one for South Korea. Washington could walk away safer while Seoul remains under essentially the same nuclear threat. A deal celebrated as nuclear risk reduction in Washington could therefore deepen strategic insecurity in Seoul. This goes beyond fears of Seoul being sidelined. The danger is not South Korea’s seat at the table, but American and South Korean security being traded on different terms.

Whether a Trump-Kim summit occurs is not the central question. The crisis has already begun. Trump has ordered exercise cuts and openly discussed North Korea’s nuclear arsenal, while Pyongyang rejects denuclearization and seeks to deal directly with Washington. Seoul, meanwhile, sees an opportunity for peace.

This leaves the Lee government with a far more serious question. Lee stresses South Korea’s military strength and self-reliant defense, and wants wartime operational control transferred within his term. Yet North Korea may possess as many as 120 nuclear warheads. His government rejects both the redeployment of U.S. tactical nuclear weapons and an independent South Korean nuclear arsenal.

So what, exactly, is South Korea’s answer to North Korea’s nuclear weapons?

Extended deterrence remains the foundation of the alliance. Yet when Trump abruptly ordered major cuts in joint exercises, Lee did not publicly object. He praised the move as a step toward dialogue and expressed his “respect.” Lee invokes self-reliant defense, presses for wartime operational control and rejects an independent nuclear deterrent — yet applauds a move that raises questions about alliance deterrence.

Lee televises Cabinet meetings and questions ministers even on administrative details. Yet how South Korea will live under the specter of North Korea’s growing nuclear arsenal is a question of national survival. On this, the public deserves far greater clarity. This is not for a minister to answer. The president must answer the South Korean people.

That obligation is greater for an administration calling itself the “People’s Sovereignty Government.” Popular sovereignty is not a slogan for attaching the people’s name to decisions already made. How credible is extended deterrence when Washington itself is scaling back a pillar of alliance readiness? Why rule out U.S. tactical nuclear weapons or an independent nuclear deterrent? Their costs and risks should be openly debated and, if necessary, put to a referendum. If national survival does not warrant popular sovereignty, what does?

The same applies to wartime operational control. Transfer must depend on military conditions, not a president’s term. Once a presidential timetable comes before security conditions, priorities are reversed. National security is not a legacy project to be completed on a president’s political calendar.

Nor is saying we want peace an answer. No government wants war.

North Korea is not disarming. America is changing. South Korea must prepare for the worst. Peace is no substitute for deterrence, and deterrence is not something a nation can afford to experiment with.

The three men at the center of this drama are playing very different games. Trump calculates America’s interests. Kim calculates the best moment to bargain with Washington while keeping his nuclear arsenal. Lee speaks of dialogue, de-escalation, operational control and peace. Yet the country with most at stake is neither the United States nor North Korea. It is the Republic of Korea, living under North Korea’s nuclear shadow.

What Trump wants is clear. What Kim wants is clear. It is time for Lee to explain just as clearly what he intends to defend — and with what.

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