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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


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