Rapid developments, in a country that is one of the United States’ closest allies. With “democracy” at the basis of this alliance. The events of the last few hours in South Korea have left “a profound sense of unease about the political future” of the countrywhere there are around 29,000 US troops, and also concern about the security pact that unites the US, Japan and South Korea, a deterrent against China and Russia.
Writing about the Biden Administration’s surprise at what happened in the last few hours, in a region where there is no shortage of tension, is the Washington Post which speaks of a sigh of relief for the Biden Administration when the South Korean president, Yoon Suk Yeol, backtracked within a few hours after imposing martial law, sparking reactions of indignation and confusion among South Koreans, who are still marching in their thousands in the center of Seoul contesting the president.
A fact, they repeated from Washington, of which the United States had not been previously warned. All while American President Joe Biden and US Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, are both abroad.
Yoon “is one of the pillars of our strategy” in the region and now his political future is in doubt, comments a US official. The next few days will likely be tense for Seoul, as for Washington, although Biden Administration officials have expressed some optimism for the fate of the trilateral pact. “We think this will continue because it is our common interest,” the source notes. And Washington underlines a strategy designed “to isolate it from any political change or turmoil at the top”.
Ma Bidensays Victor Cha of Georgetown University and with a past in the George W. Bush Administration, dwill have to evaluate, weigh how positive Yoon was and how possible his political survival is considered possible. The prospect of impeachment or if Yoon is forced to resign, “will be a great loss for the United States” because Yoon was crucial to that trilateral pact, agreed at last year’s Camp David summit, which ushered in a new era of partnership trilateral. And, Cha notes, Yoon was also a supporter of the “Washington Declaration,” a bilateral affirmation of the evolving U.S.-South Korea alliance amid an evolving security environment on the Korean Peninsula and to support the defense of Ukraine against the Russian invasion.
Beth Sanner, with a background in intelligence, fears that North Korea may try to exploit the chaos in the South. Observers, he says, have been worried for months that North Korea could conduct some kind of “kinetic action” in the coming months, perhaps bombing a South Korean island or sinking a South Korean ship.