A History of Korea (113 page)

The return of wartime operational control deeply divided South Korea, with progressives claiming that the 2012 date came too late, as South Korea would be unable to lead the process of instituting a peace regime on the Korean peninsula if it did not have full control of its military. The conservatives believed that it came too early, especially as the denuclearization of North Korea had not occurred. The transfer of control had to be viewed realistically, however, and so the agreement was reached because it met the needs of the two allies. It gave the United States the flexibility it needed for the rapid deployment of the
USFK
around the globe, and it enabled the Roh Moo-hyun administration to realize its goal of a self-reliant military alliance.

Since the late 1990s South Korea’s engagement policy toward its northern neighbor had unleashed the “south-south conflict,” deep ideological divisions in South Korean politics over the wisdom of the attempted engagement with North Korea and, inevitably, the alliance with the United States. Progressives wanted to pursue Korean reunification and national unity as a number-one priority in inter-Korean relations, whereas conservatives were cautious about reconciliation with North Korea and attached great importance to the South Korean–U.S. military alliance.

The “south-south conflict” is vividly demonstrated by the dispute over the MacArthur statue at Freedom Park on a hilltop overlooking the port of Inch’
ŏ
n, Seoul’s gateway to the Yellow Sea. The bronze statue commemorates General Douglas MacArthur’s landing of U.S. forces on Inch’
ŏ
n, on 15 September 1950, which turned the tide in the Korean War. The park was first established in the late nineteenth century as Man’guk, or All Nations, Park, Korea’s first modern-style park. The name was changed in 1957 with the placement of the MacArthur statue. The inscription on the statue’s pedestal reads: “We shall never forget what he and his valiant officers and men of the
U.N.
Command did for us and for freedom.”

In 2005 the pledge to never forget appeared to be in danger of being undermined. In May pro–North Korean groups began a series of rallies at Freedom Park and other locations in Inch’
ŏ
n, calling for the statue’s removal and the withdrawal of U.S. forces from South Korea. Conservative groups immediately responded, holding their own rallies near the statue to oppose its removal. On
17 July 2005, when two large rallies were held at Freedom Park, one supporting the statue’s removal and the other opposing it, the police had to intervene to prevent a physical confrontation between the two groups. On 11 September a leftist group, “People’s Solidarity,” held rallies across South Korea to demand that the statue be removed, and they clashed with the riot police trying to keep them apart from conservative groups holding counter rallies. The Roh Moo-hyun administration responded to those protesters who wanted to remove the statue by suggesting that they should not press the issue, as it might erode South Korean relations with the United States. In fact, public opinion polls showed that only 10 percent of South Koreans supported removing MacArthur’s statue. Still, anti–U.S. sentiment ran high, whereas the tendency of decreasing enmity toward North Korea, which had begun with the June 2000 inter-Korean summit, continued. Under these circumstances, the MacArthur statue would remain controversial.

The security issue was so dominant in past South Korean relations with the United States that other crucial items on the legislative agenda often failed to draw adequate attention from top South Korean policy makers. The Roh Moo-hyun administration sought to expand cooperative ties with the United States in other areas, notably in trade. With bilateral trade exceeding $70 billion a year, building a new trading system with the United States was essential. The Roh Moo-hyun administration believed that a free trade agreement (
FTA
), which would eliminate many of the barriers to trade and investment, should be at the center of the new trading system. Roh’s pro-
FTA
policy was exceptionally well received by his conservative opponents.

South Korea and the United States embarked on a quick march, deciding, on February 2006, to draw up a free trade agreement within one year. The first of eight formal negotiating rounds took place in June of that year. Working against an April 2007 deadline, South Korean and U.S. negotiators tried to bind together two economies that ranked 13th and 1st in size, respectively, worldwide. For Roh, a free trade pact would cement the alliance with the United States, countering criticism that he had let South Korea drift into China’s economic and political orbit. By jumping over China and Japan to win America’s first free trade pact with an Asian powerhouse, the unpopular president would leave a strong legacy when he stepped down from office.

Finally, South Korea and the United States concluded a free trade agreement on 1 April 2007. The agreement was comprehensive, with calibrated exceptions made in a respectful bow to political reality. Most tariffs on bilateral trade would be removed within three years. Even in agriculture, where South Korean trade barriers were much higher than in other areas, many tariffs would be phased out over time and many quotas would be expanded; only rice would be exempted from some degree of liberalization.

South Korea and the United States still had considerable ground to cover on the issue of goods from the inter-Korean Kaes
ŏ
ng Industrial Complex. South Korea wanted goods produced in the industrial park to be fully eligible for
FTA
preferences, whereas the United States wanted no benefits from the
FTA
to accrue to the Kim Jong-il regime. The two sides bridged their differences in Annex 22–C on “outward processing zones” (OPZs) on the Korean peninsula. The agreement did not accord trade preferences to goods produced in the Kaes
ŏ
ng Industrial Complex, but it created a process for future consideration of such a development, if the economic and political situation on the Korean peninsula changed as desired by both countries.

After the conclusion of the trade pact, many South Korean activists staged a demonstration in Seoul, carrying large signs reading, “No to Korea–U.S.
FTA
,” and shouting “FTA go away.” They called the Roh administration’s push for the agreement a “coup d’état,” not an act of governance, and they pledged to nullify the bilateral bill and prevent parliamentary ratification of the agreement.

The free trade agreement between South Korea and the United States was generally expected to open a new era of opportunity and challenge that would determine the fate of South Korea’s economy. The trade pact would harm the country’s service and agricultural sectors, but in the long term the South Korean economy would gain more than it lost.

During the 2000s questions have been raised about the justification for, and sustainability of, a future
ROK
–U.S. alliance because of the transition in the global and regional strategic environment in Northeast Asia, differences between South Korean and American priorities and perceptions of the North Korean threat, and South Korea’s domestic political transformation. Under these circumstances, during the Roh Moo-hyun administration, the alliance between the two nations faced considerable difficulties. It was strained to the extent that the foundation of the bilateral alliance could be threatened. The “blood-forged alliance” was in need of fence mending.

When President Lee Myung-bak took the oath of office, on 25 February 2008, he vowed to restore South Korea’s “blood-forged” relationship with the United States by emphasizing free market solutions. In mid-April 2008 Lee, who was widely considered pro-American, took his first official overseas visit to the United States, where he met with U.S. President George W. Bush at the White House and Camp David. But Lee’s pro–U.S. policy soon backfired, when concerns over possible public health threats from U.S. beef imports, commodities of central importance to the South Korea–U.S.
FTA
, caused a growing popular opposition to the Lee administration.
¹¹
The public backlash against U.S. beef imports also complicated Lee’s diplomatic attempts to foster a closer alliance with the United States. The popular protests increasingly shifted from their initial focus on public health to broader anti–U.S. and anti-Lee sentiments. Critics charged that the beef import deal was a “gift” from Lee to Bush, hastily arranged as part of Lee’s strategy to develop closer ties with the United States. The anti–U.S. beef protest forced the two nations to suspend attempts to resolve several pending issues indefinitely. These sensitive issues included talks over the upkeep of U.S. forces in South Korea, the relocation of U.S. military bases, and the dispatch of the Korean police to Afghanistan.

During President Bush’s visit to South Korea, on 5–6 August 2008, officials from both administrations announced that the outlook of the South Korean– U.S. alliance was shifting from its present scope of defending the Korean peninsula to a more “strategic and future-oriented structure” capable of contributing to global peace and prosperity. In the newly established structure, South Korea was expected to play a more central role in the Proliferation Security Initiative aimed at stemming the spread of weapons of mass destruction around the world.

After the Obama administration was inaugurated in January 2009, South Korea looked to bolster its military alliance with the United States, a position that received positive responses from the new U.S. government. At the G20 summit in London in April 2009, Obama hailed South Korea as “one of America’s closest allies and greatest friends.”
¹²

In mid-June 2009 Presidents Lee and Obama held a summit in Washington to coordinate their efforts aimed at resolving North Korea’s nuclear and long-range missile capabilities. Following the 16 June summit, the two leaders declared a “joint vision for the
ROK
–U.S. alliance.” The new vision called for a
broader “twenty-first-century strategic partnership” in the realms of politics, economics, culture, and other areas outside the security arena, and proclaimed “extended deterrence” in responding to North Korea’s increasing nuclear threats. The term “extended deterrence” was intended as a declaration of South Korea’s inclusion under the U.S. umbrella for U.S. protection against nuclear threats or attacks from North Korea. It referred to a comprehensive agreement that an attack against an allied nation would be construed as an attack on U.S. soil, justifying a response that would include mobilizing U.S. nuclear and conventional weapons and resources. Under the extended nuclear pledge, the U.S. military could retaliate against an attack on South Korea by deploying tactical nuclear weapons such as B-61 nuclear bombs carried by B-2/52 bombers and F-15E, F-16, and F/A-18 fighters, or Tomahawk cruise missiles launched from nuclear-powered submarines to strike North Korea’s nuclear facilities. U.S. and South Korean leaders mainly discussed ways of deterring and countering lingering nuclear and missile threats, as North Korea heightened tensions on the Korean peninsula through a second nuclear test and a series of short-range missile launches.
¹³

President Obama, during his visit to the
ROK
on 18–19 October 2009, confirmed a continuing U.S. commitment to defend South Korea against North Korean military threats. In response to U.S. security guarantees, South Korea pledged to assist U.S. military operations in Afghanistan, dispatching a Provincial Reconstruction Team (
PRT
), comprised of some 300 police and military forces, to the war-torn nation to protect civilians.

On 26 June 2010, South Korea and the United States agreed to postpone the U.S. transfer of wartime operational control to South Korea until 1 December 2015, given the volatile security situation on the Korean peninsula caused by North Korea’s continued military provocations, specifically its long-range missile and nuclear tests in 2009. Tensions further mounted following the sinking of the South Korean Navy corvette
Cheonan,
which also prompted calls from South Korea to delay the handover. The agreement to postpone the transfer of OPCON came during a summit meeting between Presidents Lee and Obama in Canada while they attended a G20 summit. The decision to delay sent an effective message to North Korea about the strength of the
ROK
–U.S. alliance and the risk of starting war against South Korea.

In early December 2010 South Korea and the United States reached a deal on a revised Free Trade Agreement. Several rounds of talks were slow to overcome disagreements over U.S. demands for easier terms for car exports, but then
South Korea ceded some points in car tariffs in return for benefits for agricultural and pharmaceutical exports. The new
FTA
pact faced tough scrutiny by legislatures in both countries, as South Korea’s main opposition Democratic Party accused the Lee government of making “humiliating” concessions to the United States on American-manufactured automobile imports and vowed to mount a national campaign in opposition.

In late 2011, a showdown between the ruling Grand National Party and opposition parties loomed over the parliamentary ratification of the new
FTA
agreement, as rival political parties showed little willingness to compromise. Finally, on 22 November 2011, the National Assembly passed the long-pending pact, with the
GNP
pressing ahead with the ratification process despite intense resistance from opposition parties. The ratification heightened political tension as the opposition decided to boycott all parliamentary sessions and fight back the ratification.

With the coming of the Lee Myung-bak administration in February 2008, South Korea and the United States had reinforced their ties, putting their alliance on a new path. For instance, immediately after North Korea’s bombardment of South Korean territory (Y
ŏ
np’y
ŏ
ng-do) in November 2010, South Korea and the United States responded with joint naval exercises, including a nuclear-powered U.S. aircraft carrier in the Yellow Sea, intended to signal the allies’ resolve to react strongly to any future North Korean aggression. During the Lee Myung-bak administration, the
ROK
–U.S. alliance again became extremely solid.