President Yoon Suk Yeol has changed the course of South Korea’s diplomacy like no leader before him. He put his country in lock step with the United States by countering North Korea with sanctions and joint military drills. He won Washington’s plaudits when he overcame a century of historical grievances Koreans held against Japan and helped lay the ground for trilateral cooperation to deter China.
He sang the praises of Western values such as freedom. He credited the alliance with Washington for making South Korea’s ascent as a global economic and cultural powerhouse possible. He moved South Korea more assertively onto the global stage, criticizing Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as “a violation of international law” and selling weapons and ammunition to countries that supported Ukraine. And he stood up against China, which South Korea had long feared as a bully but needs as a trading partner, by opposing its “unlawful maritime claims” in the Indo-Pacific region.
Now, as he is locked out of power following his impeachment, his foreign policy — and Washington’s painstaking alliance-building in Northeast Asia — faces the prospect of unraveling. Mr. Yoon was not impeached for his foreign policy. But his diplomatic agenda — his greatest legacy — could be one of the biggest casualties of his downfall.
Mr. Yoon is suspended from office, and the Constitutional Court began preliminary deliberations on Monday as to whether to reinstate him or formally remove him. Prime Minister Han Duck-soo, a nonelected official with no popular mandate, has stepped in as an interim leader as stipulated by the Constitution.
“Washington couldn’t have asked for a better ally and partner than the Yoon government,” said Duyeon Kim, a fellow with the Center for a New American Security. “Until we know who South Korea’s president is, the U.S. just lost a key partner at the leader level whose personal conviction aligns with Washington’s values and approach to regional and global issues, particularly when dealing with authoritarian states.”
Mr. Yoon undid his own legacy when he abruptly declared martial law on Dec. 3, placing his country under military rule for the first time in 45 years. Citizens and opposition lawmakers rallied to force him to rescind it in six hours. Then they staged huge evening protests, until the Assembly impeached him on Saturday. Mr. Yoon had not responded to prosecutors’ demand that he present himself by last Saturday for questioning over whether he committed insurrection during his short-lived martial law. On Monday, they summoned him again.
Decades ago, martial law in South Korea entailed arrests, torture and bloody crackdowns. This time, in a sign of how far South Korea’s democracy has matured, peaceful crowds achieved their goal without a single life being lost. Still, global powers reacted with shock and disapproval.
“Yoon Suk Yeol’s surreal declaration of martial law laid bare his complete miscalculation of South Korea’s position in the world, let alone as Northeast Asia’s stabilizing force,” said Alexis Dudden, a professor of history at the University of Connecticut.
U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin canceled a visit to Seoul in the wake of Mr. Yoon’s martial law decree. News media in Japan reported that Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba has also shelved plans for a possible trip to Seoul in January. Mr. Ishiba’s office said the visit had never been confirmed and declined to comment further.
“Ironically, Yoon was held up as a paragon of an allied democratic leader, and his ham-handed attempt to impose martial law is an egg in the face” for the outgoing Biden administration, said John Delury, a Korea expert and visiting professor at Luiss University in Rome.
Mr. Yoon’s undoing throws both South Korea and U.S. policy in the region into deep uncertainty, at a time when North Korea is escalating its nuclear threat and the incoming administration of the unpredictable Donald J. Trump is poised to rock the alliance with Seoul.
South Koreans have traditionally been wary of great powers, reflecting their deep grievances over Japanese colonial rule and the division of the Korean Peninsula by Moscow and Washington at the end of World War II. Seoul had kept Japan at arm’s length, even though Washington urged its two key allies to work closely together to deter China and North Korea. It had also sought diplomatic balance between the United States and China. Its more progressive leaders, like Mr. Yoon’s predecessor, Moon Jae-in, doggedly pursued dialogue with North Korea, even causing friction with Washington, which tended to emphasize sanctions.
Mr. Yoon changed all that.
He has said South Korea should no longer be “ambiguous” over whose side it is on in the rivalry between Washington and Beijing. In his single most daring foreign policy initiative, he broke a logjam in relations with Japan by promising that Seoul would no longer seek compensation for victims of forced labor during Japan’s colonial rule. The move was unpopular in South Korea, with angry people pouring onto the streets to denounce him as a traitor.
“It relied most heavily on his own personal commitment, lacking broader support from the Korean public,” said Daniel Sneider, a lecturer of East Asian studies at Stanford University. Of all of Mr. Yoon’s changes, the progress made in Korea-Japan relations is most endangered, he added.
A progressive leader from the main opposition Democratic Party is likely to win the next election, and the party favors maintaining a more delicate balancing act between Washington and Beijing, as well as dialogue with North Korea.
“If, as seems likely, the Democratic Party regains power, South Korea’s foreign policy seems poised to shift toward appeasement of North Korea, deference to China, hostility toward Japan, and skepticism of the United States,” said Danny Russel, vice president of the New York-based Asia Society Policy Institute.
In an interview with The New York Times last week, Lee Jae-myung, the Democratic Party leader, tried to assuage such concerns. He called Mr. Yoon “unnecessarily submissive” toward Japan and “too antagonistic” toward China. But he said he supported trilateral cooperation with Washington and Tokyo.
“We fully understand the United States’ stance toward China, and we should conform to it,” Mr. Lee said. “But we need a relationship with China where we can seek practical interests to the extent that we are still in accordance with the U.S. policy on China and we do not harm our relations with Washington.”
South Korea has long profited both from strong security ties with the United States, its only treaty ally, and from booming economic relations with China, its biggest trade partner. But in recent years, it has found itself increasingly squeezed between the two giants as their rivalry intensified, with Washington pressuring Seoul into joining its policy of denying China advanced semiconductors.
Mr. Sneider said that South Korean progressives “are first and foremost Korean nationalists — and they can be quite skeptical and even hostile regarding China.”
“But they are also not interested in having Korea act as an instrument of American global politics unless it fits Korea’s own national interests,” he said.
In his defiant speeches in the past two weeks, Mr. Yoon described South Korea as under attack by “North Korean followers and anti-state forces” at home and by threats from overseas. He cited two instances of Chinese nationals using drones for possible espionage.
Mr. Yoon’s comments were “deeply upsetting” and his Chinese spy allegations “unfounded,” said Mao Ning, a foreign ministry spokeswoman in Beijing.
South Korea’s interim caretaker government has little mandate or bandwidth for initiatives, pending the decision by the Constitutional Court.
That leaves it in a weakened position when Mr. Trump takes office, given his threat to withdraw U.S. troops from South Korea unless it pays more for them.
“With the incoming Trump administration’s transactional view of American alliances, Yoon’s temper tantrum may yet prove Pyongyang’s best Christmas present ever,” Ms. Dudden said.
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