SEOUL, South Korea — As freezing temperatures add further chill to South Korea’s winter of discontent, analysts are fretting over the foreign policy implications of a resurgence of the country’s left wing.
Right-wing President Yoon Suk Yeol is disgraced and powerless, banned from overseas travel and facing a parliamentary probe for treason. Thanks to his failed martial law declaration on Dec. 3, a return of left-wing governance — likely a more extreme form than any prior Seoul administration — looks inevitable.
That could tilt Seoul away from Washington and Tokyo, and pivot it toward Beijing and Pyongyang.
There were already concerns here that the incoming Trump administration has a very different view of the alliance linking South Korea and the United States. A pro-Beijing shift by Seoul could widen that divide, potentially endangering the 71-year-old partnership.
“The [Yoon] administration’s foreign policy is now dead in the water,” wrote Jeffery Roberston, who teaches international relations at Seoul’s Yonsei University. “Whoever comes next will have more than enough authority to discard it.”
Mr. Yoon’s attempted autocoup was almost immediately voted down by the National Assembly, but opposition parties fell just short over the weekend trying to impeach and remove the president well before his term is set to end in 2027. The result: South Korean politics is now in a deadlock.
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Mr. Yoon’s conservative People Power Party, which held together to defeat Saturday’s impeachment vote, has made clear that Mr. Yoon must be stripped of his powers and leave office. However, it has not put forth a timeline for his exit, nor any mechanism for how to do it.
During a briefing on Monday, the Defense Ministry said that the disgraced president still maintains control of the military, a power that the constitution explicitly reserves for the president.
The confusion leaves the national helm — in the near term — in the hands of Prime Minister Han Duck-soo, who has spoken of “an orderly and early resignation” for Mr. Yoon.
But the opposition calls the current political situation, with Mr. Yoon still holding on to his office, “bizarre” and destructive of “constitutional order.”
Another impeachment motion looks set for Wednesday. The PPP’s maneuvers suggest it is playing for time as it desperately seeks a new strategy.
If a presidential election is held in the near future, a victory by the opposition Democratic Party of Korea looks assured, giving it control of both the executive and the legislature.
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As winter descends on the peninsula, the PPP hopes that harsh chills will dissuade protesters. That looks unlikely, given the opposition’s ability to mobilize, as witnessed by the crowds outside the Assembly last Tuesday and Saturday nights.
Moreover, the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions has vowed to hold rallies of its own in the days ahead. The KCTU initiated protests against conservative President Park Geun-hye in 2016, protests that snowballed and ended with her ouster and imprisonment a year later.
Some believe the PPP is hoping legal issues facing the opposition leader, Lee Jae-myung — many relating to alleged corruption from his time as a regional politician — will bring him down prior to Mr. Yoon’s exit. But Mr. Lee, arguably the central player in the failure of Mr. Yoon’s martial law gambit, has successfully overcome multiple legal challenges in the past.
Yet another theory is that the PPP is flexing its remaining political muscle simply to maintain relevance as the country charts its post-Yoon path.
If Mr. Yoon badly misread public opinion, the DPK and related minority parties may have erred in bringing foreign policy issues into their impeachment bill drive.
While the removal of Mr. Yoon is front and central, the bill also charges that,” under the guise of so-called ‘value-based diplomacy,’ the administration has disregarded geopolitical balance, antagonized North Korea, China and Russia, and adhered to a peculiar Japan-centric foreign policy. This has included appointing Japan-leaning individuals to key government positions.”
“Such policies have … heightened the risk of war, and neglected the state’s duty to ensure national security,” the impeachment text warned.
That language made the impeachment vote a tougher call for conservatives and on Saturday, 105 of the DPK’s 108 lawmakers boycotted the impeachment vote, effectively killing it.
The last left-wing government in Seoul, led by President Moon Jae-in, had more contact with North Korea than any other. It also laid the groundwork for the unprecedented — albeit unsuccessful — summits between Mr. Trump in his first term and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.
But the last left-wing government also sent always-fraught Seoul-Tokyo relations to a nadir, overturning a 2015 bilateral agreement on “comfort women” and the handling of disputed funds, and clashing with Japan on World War II-related reparations and other issues.
Things changed under Mr. Yoon. A hawk on North Korea, he upgraded ties with Washington — winning a nuclear consultative group — and massively improved the tone of bilateral relations with Japan as well.
American policymakers were delighted, while Japan’s response was more measured. Tokyo’s hesitation is, according to sources who spoke to The Washington Times, rooted in distrust that Seoul can maintain its current pro-Japan policies. On Monday, Seoul’s deputy foreign minister met Tokyo’s ambassador in a bid to provide assurance, but Mr. Lee’s rising political fortunes likely complicated the talks.
Even more outspoken than Mr. Moon, Mr. Lee has addressed anti-Japan rallies in Seoul, and called a 2023 Seoul-Tokyo summit “the most shameful and crushing moment in the history of our foreign relations.” In 2023, he met Beijing’s ambassador to Seoul, who criticized the closeness of Seoul’s alliance with Washington.
Mr. Yoon’s lack of coordination with Washington last week, notably his failure to notify the combined U.S.-South Korean military command of his troop deployments, offers ammunition to U.S. critics of the alliance.
“Yoon may have unintentionally given advocates of decreased commitment to South Korea a major boon by allowing them to paint Seoul as a rogue and unreliable partner,” the Carnegie Endowment wrote in a commentary.
• Andrew Salmon can be reached at asalmon@washingtontimes.com.
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