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President Donald Trump should warn South Korean President Lee Jae Myung over his growing appeasement of China and Russia. Trump should make clear that while South Korea has the obvious right to act in its own self-interest, the United States must do the same.
On paper, U.S.-South Korean relations look strong.
The U.S. military maintains its robust force of approximately 25,000 troops supporting South Korea’s defense against North Korea. An agreement to increase Seoul’s financial contribution to the U.S. deployment will enter into force next year. Trump and Lee also appear to get along. Attending the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Seoul last week, the two leaders agreed to reduce reciprocal tariffs. South Korea will also make up to $350 billion in new U.S. investments. And benefitting both the U.S. economy and the weak U.S. naval industrial base, South Korea will build at least one nuclear submarine at a renovated dockyard in Philadelphia. The U.S. will provide submarine technology to enable this construction.
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Below the surface, however, there are looming challenges in this relationship.
One problem is that Trump has been an unreliable partner to Seoul since reentering office. Trump’s roughshod tariff regime caused consternation in South Korea, as it did among all U.S. allies, undermining America’s reputation as a trusted ally. A raid by ICE agents at a Hyundai car manufacturing plant in Georgia, in September, was also conducted in a foolish manner, causing widespread outcry in South Korea and fostering new hesitation regarding U.S. investments. And while the APEC summit at least put these issues in the rearview mirror, Lee is now causing new problems.
First up, there’s South Korea’s rampant skirting of international sanctions on Russia.
Newly imposed Western sanctions seek to pressure Putin to join serious peace negotiations with Ukraine. Most U.S. allies are supporting this effort, but not Seoul. As Robert Brooks notes, South Korean exports to Russia, via nonsanctioned Kyrgyzstan, are now surging to the tune of many billions of dollars a year. These exports include high-tech products that directly benefit Russia’s war machine. For South Korea to have benefited so greatly and for so long from the U.S. military’s security umbrella only to now empower a growing threat to that power in Europe — if Putin is not stopped in Ukraine, his appetite for and means of broader war against NATO will only grow — is inexcusable. Lee is blatantly undermining Trump’s peace agenda.
We also see Lee’s increasing appeasement of China. Again, it must be noted that Trump’s tariff regime on Seoul has hardly helped matters here, both degrading trust with Lee’s government and fostering greater anti-Americanism in South Korea. But Lee isn’t just seeking better ties with China — he’s clearly seeking to earn Chinese President Xi Jinping’s favor at America’s cost.
In a September interview with Time, Lee emphasized that “we will stand alongside the U.S. in the emerging global order and in supply chains centered around the U.S., but it is crucial for us to manage our relationship with China carefully to avoid antagonizing them.” Lee is referencing China’s growing threats to Taiwan and the Philippines here, the latter of which is a treaty U.S. defense ally like South Korea. Lee’s rhetoric reflects a trend.
In 2024, prior to becoming president, Lee criticized what he said was Seoul’s excessive support of U.S. policy on Taiwan. As Lee put it, “Why do we interfere in cross-strait [China-Taiwan] relations? Why do we care what happens to the Taiwan Strait? Shouldn’t we just take care of ourselves?”
This rhetoric underlines why Xi was all smiles when he met Lee at the APEC summit last week. For Xi, Taiwan is the red-line issue of all red-line issues. Lee’s separation from the U.S. on the issue thus warms Xi’s heart. After all, in the event of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan, an action that many U.S. military analysts believe Xi will order by 2030, China’s prospect of victory will grow significantly if the U.S. military cannot rely upon South Korean assistance to dominate the East China Sea northern approaches to the island democracy. U.S. air and naval bases in South Korea would also be instrumental to any defense of Taiwan.
Trump should seek clarity from the South Korean president. China might be South Korea’s main export destination, but South Korea’s exports to the U.S. are a close second behind. The vast majority of South Korea’s export partners are also close American allies. Again, Trump’s impulsive tariffs damage important relationships. Still, he should leverage Lee in the understanding that both America’s defensive umbrella and its trading relationship with Seoul cannot coexist with Seoul’s tolerance for a Chinese military campaign to upend the security and prosperity of the U.S. and its Pacific allies and, indeed, the global order built on freedom of peoples and of trade. Seoul should be more concerned here. If China takes Taiwan, it will use its control of the East China Sea and South China Sea trade routes to extract political obedience from all Pacific rim nations.
What should the U.S. do if Lee refuses to recalibrate his Sino-Russia appeasement strategy?
Well, it would certainly be strategically untenable for the U.S. to justify retaining its current force posture in South Korea. U.S. forces in Korea don’t begin and end with the U.S. Army’s 2nd Infantry Division and a whole range of other Army units. They include Marine, Navy, and special operations forces, and two reinforced “super squadrons” of F-16 fighter jets. If South Korea isn’t going to support the U.S. military’s readiness for a Chinese invasion of Taiwan, at least some of these units would be far better placed on Okinawa, the Philippines, or mainland Japan. Contrary to the delusions of some, China has a very real prospect of defeating the U.S. in a war over Taiwan, even if the U.S. leverages its full power to that effort.
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Perhaps Lee has provided private commitments to Trump that overcome these concerns. Nevertheless, what Lee is doing in public is plainly problematic for key U.S. security priorities. The South Korean president has the authority and responsibility to pursue whatever policies he believes are in his people’s interest.
So does Trump.
