Likely to lead South Korea, Lee holds left’s foreign policy views

In the wake of President Yoon Suk-yeol’s ouster as president of the Republic of Korea, his former opponent Lee Jae-myung is likely to win the snap presidential election scheduled for June 3. A Gallup poll released in April indicated Lee enjoys a support level of 34 percent, while his highest-rated rival languishes at 9 percent. 

Yoon was a conservative, while Lee represents the progressive Democratic Party (DP). Ordinarily, a change in South Korea from a conservative to a left-of-center government would have the potential to substantially shake up international relations in Northeast Asia.

Progressive governments in Korea tend to be relatively conciliatory toward North Korea and China, which correspondingly engenders tensions with the US.

Kim Dae-jung, who was South Korea’s president in 1998-2003, opposed the hardline US approach to North Korea, instead implementing the now-infamous “Sunshine Policy” of offering economic rewards – including a secret payment of $500 million to secure a summit meeting with Kim Jong-il – in an attempt to pacify Pyongyang’s hostility toward the ROK. 

Kim’s successor Roh Moo-hyun continued the Sunshine Policy, criticized the US approach of using economic sanctions to pressure North Korea to give up its nuclear weapons program and sought “equidistance” for the ROK between China and the US.

By contrast, although controversial and ultimately a failure at home, the conservative Yoon was unusually supportive of the US agenda. His “Strategy for a Free, Peaceful, and Prosperous Indo-Pacific Region” closely resembled the Biden Administration’s “Indo-Pacific Strategy” published a few months prior. 

Yoon was tough on North Korea and spoke without deference about China, consistent with US positions. He promised a foreign policy anchored in the same liberal values Washington was then promoting.  The US government especially welcomed Yoon’s willingness to increase strategic cooperation with Tokyo despite Korea’s historical grievances with Japan remaining unresolved.

Accordingly, many observers expect a major shift in South Korea’s foreign policy if the presidency shifts from Yoon to Lee. They see the ROK at a “crossroads,” with some concluding a Lee government would “send shockwaves through East Asia’s delicate balance of power” or even create “a nightmare scenario.”

The transition from Yoon to Lee, however, would likely be a tremor rather than an earthquake.

To be sure, Lee’s outlook differs from Yoon’s. The DP argues that Yoon excessively damaged relations with China and Russia in his effort to please Washington.

During the National Assembly elections of March 2024, Lee complained about Yoon needlessly antagonizing China, the country that buys about a quarter of South Korea’s exports. “Chinese people don’t buy South Korean products because they don’t like South Korea. Why are we bothering [Beijing]?” he asked. “Why do we care what happens to the Taiwan Strait?  Shouldn’t we just take care of ourselves?”

Lee opposed the diplomatic boycott of the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympic Games imposed by the US and other governments. He is also against the deployment of additional US THAAD anti-missile batteries in South Korea.

Lee is also less pro-Japan than Yoon. When the Yoon government, seeking improved relations with Tokyo, declined to press the Japanese government to compensate Korean forced laborers, Lee called Yoon “submissive and subservient.”

Lee has endorsed former President Moon Jae-in’s approach of seeking rapprochement with North Korea by offering sanctions relief, with the stipulation that sanctions could be reimposed in the absence of reciprocal DPRK concessions.

While Yoon said South Korea might provide lethal military assistance to Ukraine as a result of North Korean soldiers fighting on Russia’s side, Lee has made clear he would not.

Lee is against a trilateral military alliance that includes Japan, saying this could be “very dangerous” because of the territorial dispute between Korea and Japan over ownership of the Dokdo / Takeshima Islands. 

In practical terms, however, Lee’s proposed policy toward Japan is not dramatically different from Yoon’s. Lee said during his speech announcing his candidacy for president that he believes it “important” to “strengthen trilateral cooperation with Japan” short of formally allying with Japan.

The “two-track” diplomacy that Lee favors would pursue strategic cooperation while simultaneously and separately seeking justice for Korean victims of Japan’s past misdeeds. Lee told The Economist he does not viscerally hate the Japanese. Upon visiting Japan, he said, he “was shocked by Japanese people’s diligence, sincerity and courtesy.” He concluded that the general Korean view of Japan “has ultimately been distorted by politics.”

Lee advocates speeding up giving South Korea operational control over its own armed forces during wartime, but he is not calling for the expulsion of US military bases. Although he once used the phrase “US occupying forces,” he later explained he was referring to the period immediately after the Second World War. Now, he says, “This is not an occupying force, but an ally.”

Lee wants talks with North Korea to lower tensions, but this does not put him at odds with the new Trump Administration. Trump himself says he wants to re-engage with Kim Jong-un. Lee says he is “very grateful” for this, and even seems to goad Trump in this direction, saying he might recommend Trump for the Nobel Prize that the US president covets.

Lee would return to something like Roh’s equidistance policy, attempting to preserve the security relationship with the US while maintaining healthy economic engagement with China. That would prove difficult if the US-China cold war should intensify. But this would not distinguish Lee from his predecessor.

Aside from advancing trilateral cooperation including Japan, Yoon’s alignment with the US against China was arguably more rhetorical than substantive. For example, Yoon’s government refrained from criticizing China by name over its harassment of Philippine vessels near Second Thomas Shoal in the South China Sea, and Yoon declined to meet with US Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi the day after her visit to Taiwan in 2022.

From the standpoint of Korean conservatives and many in the US policy-making community, a left-leaning Korean government is prone to pursuing a North Korea policy that increases the South’s vulnerability to DPRK exploitation or aggression. The danger arises when Pyongyang, acting in bad faith, outmaneuvers Seoul during bargaining. 

That possibility is now much reduced, however, because the North is relatively uninterested in bargaining. Its nuclear and missiles programs are permanent, reunification is off the table, Kim Jong-un is not hankering for a summit meeting and Pyongyang does not seek to re-open the Kaesong Industrial Complex.

For the DPRK government, Seoul has mainly been useful only as an intermediary for seeking concessions from the US. But Kim seems to have largely moved on. Badly burned during the 2019 Hanoi summit with Trump, Kim has since entered into a fruitful partnership with Russia. Lee might have little opportunity to show magnanimity to Pyongyang even if he wants to.

Finally, Lee would not be more likely than Yoon to go nuclear. According to one recent poll, three out of four South Koreans want nukes. In 2023 Yoon threatened to acquire tactical nuclear weapons in response to the North Korean nuclear buildup, although he backed off after receiving US assurances as part of the Washington Declaration.

A nuclear-armed South Korea would indeed send a “shockwave” through the region.  Catastrophic unintentional escalation in a DPRK-ROK conflict would become more likely.  The US and South Korean governments would reconsider the necessity of the bilateral alliance. Japan would probably deploy nukes also.

The change in leadership from Yoon to Lee, however, would not increase the chances of any of this happening. The Democratic Party no longer considers nuclear weapons a taboo topic, but it currently goes no farther than favoring nuclear latency, not actual deployment.

Under a hypothetical Lee presidency, we can easily imagine that ROK-DPRK relations would remain stagnant, while modest South Korea-Japan strategic cooperation would continue. China would try to take advantage of a perceived opportunity to lure the ROK out of the US Bloc, but this campaign would bump up against limits, as South Koreans still value the US alliance. Seoul and Washington would agree in principle on working toward new talks with Pyongyang.

Thus, the region would see adjustments of South Korea’s foreign relations, but not a major reset.

Denny Roy is a senior fellow at the East-West Center in Honolulu.