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1 1 (May 20, 2019)

handle is hein.crs/govztw0001 and id is 1 raw text is: u Congressional Research Service Info riq the legislative debate snce 1914 South Korea: Background and U.S. Relations Overview South Korea (officially the Republic of Korea, or ROK) is one of the United States' most important strategic and economic partners in Asia. The U.S.-ROK Mutual Defense Treaty, signed in 1953 at the end of the Korean War, commits the United States to help South Korea defend itself, particularly from North Korea (officially the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, or DPRK). Approximately 28,500 U.S. troops are based in the ROK, which is included under the U.S. nuclear umbrella. The U.S. -ROK economic relationship is bolstered by the U.S.- South Korea Free Trade Agreement (KORUS FTA). South Korea is the United States' seventh-largest trading partner, and the United States is South Korea's second-largest trading partner, behind China. After several years of close coordination, notably on North Korea, collaboration between the United States and South Korea has become more inconsistent and unpredictable under the administrations of Donald Trump and Moon Jae- in. Moon, a progressive, was elected in May 2017 after a decade of conservative rule in South Korea. (See Figure 1 for more on ROK politics.) Moon and Trump have aligned aspects of their approaches toward North Korea, with both pursuing a rapprochement with Pyongyang. Moon brokered a summit between North Korean leader Kim Jong-un and Trump in June 2018. Kim and Trump met again in Hanoi in February 2019, though the negotiations collapsed, dealing a major blow to Moon's agenda of developing closer ties to the North. U.S.-DPRK and ROK-DPRK diplomacy have stalled since the Hanoi summit. Critical differences remain on policy issues like whether and under what conditions to offer concessions to North Korea and how to share costs associated with the U.S.-ROK alliance. U.S. sanctions on Iranian exports, particularly condensates, for which South Korea is a major global importer, are also a growing concern for Seoul. In the trade arena, although South Korea has been excluded for now from U.S. Section 232 import restrictions on autos, U.S. import restrictions remain in place on several other South Korean exports. The Trump Administration's tendency to change policy positions unexpectedly adds another element of uncertainty. North Korea Policy Coordination North Korea is the dominant strategic concern within the U.S.-South Korea relationship. In 2016 and 2017, North Korea conducted scores of missile tests and three nuclear weapons tests, demonstrating major strides in its ability to strike the continental United States with a nuclear-armed ballistic missile. The Obama and Trump Administrations responded by expanding multilateral and unilateral sanctions against North Korea. Updated May 20, 2019 Moon supported Trump's maximum pressure campaign, but also retained his longstanding preference for engaging Pyongyang. During 2017, Trump Administration officials, including the President, repeatedly raised the possibility of launching a preventive military strike. This possibility, which would risk triggering a North Korean retaliation against South Korea, appears to have convinced Moon that the United States, rather than North Korea, represented the greatest immediate threat to South Korean security. The combination of the fear of war, an ideological preference for engagement, and a belief that South Korea should shape the future of the Korean Peninsula drove Moon to improve inter-Korean relations and broker U.S.-DPRK talks. Kim Jong-un made these moves possible in early 2018 by dropping his belligerent posture and embarking on a push to break North Korea's diplomatic isolation that has included summits with U.S., ROK, Chinese, and Russian presidents. Kim has pledged to work toward complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, to not conduct nuclear or long-range missile tests while dialogue continues, and to allow the permanent dismantlement of the Yongbyon Nuclear Scientific Research Center as the United States takes corresponding measures. In the weeks following the breakdown of Trump and Kim's Hanoi summit over disagreements about the timing and sequencing of concessions, Pyongyang generally refrained from engaging with Washington and Seoul, and resumed low-level provocations. U.S.-South Korea Security Relations In addition to the presence of U.S. troops, South Korea is included under the U.S. nuclear umbrella (also known as extended deterrence), and traditionally has paid for about https://crsrepors~cor

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