The U.S. Alliance With Seoul Could Go South

Karen Elliott House rightly warns that South Koreans are worrying about the reliability of their American ally (“Will South Korea Want a Nuclear Weapon of Its Own?,” op-ed, Sept. 10). Unfortunately, an additional risk to the U.S.-ROK alliance now emanates from Seoul.

President Lee Jae Myung, elected in June, comes from the far-left wing of the left-leaning Minju (Democracy) Party, a faction predisposed to appeasing the countries U.S. forces are stationed in South Korea to defend against: North Korea and China. Though the case has been postponed for the duration of his presidency, Mr. Lee faces criminal charges for allegedly instructing businesses to channel millions of dollars to the North while he was governor of Gyeonggi province in 2018-21.

Since assuming the presidency, Mr. Lee has welcomed back pro-North officials last seen in the bad old days of U.S.-ROK tensions 20 years ago.

South Korea’s new intelligence chief, former ringleader of a Blue House cadre dubbed “the Taliban” by the South Korean press, is a longtime proponent of the “self-reliance theory”: an ideology that aims to increase South Korea’s “autonomy” by hedging against its U.S. ally.

Seoul’s new unification minister, Chung Dong-young, held that job from 2004 to 2006. At the time he apologized to Pyongyang for taking in North Korean defectors who made it to the South via Vietnam, promising it wouldn’t happen again. Already he has cancelled his ministry’s annual report on human rights in North Korea. Last month Mr. Lee publicly pledged his administration will “affirm our respect for North Korea’s current system.” Which aspects, exactly, does he find most worthy of respect?

Even more troubling than the unrequited romancing of Kim Jong Un’s dictatorship is the impulse to kowtow before an increasingly menacing Beijing. Mr. Lee’s party raised its flag at the 100th anniversary of the Chinese Communist Party in 2021 in Beijing. Earlier this month, the speaker of the ROK National Assembly—also of Minju—attended Xi Jinping’s military celebration, along with Vladimir Putin and Mr. Kim. Seoul police now threaten their own citizens for desecrating the PRC flag.


If Mr. Lee values the U.S.-ROK alliance, he should realize it might be placed at risk by a double game in Seoul.
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Nicholas Eberstadt
American Enterprise Institute
Seoul
Appeared in the September 15, 2025, print edition as 'The U.S. Alliance With Seoul Could Go South'.