Moon Jae-in says South Korea will not take sides in US-China rivalry, focuses on Xi Jinping's visit

South Korean President Moon Jae-in on Monday underscored the importance of Chinese President Xi Jinping's upcoming visit to the country, making clear that Seoul would not naturally take the side of its traditional ally Washington in its rivalry with Beijing.

Moon's remarks, made to journalists convened for his first press conference of the year, came as his foreign policy and security adviser said last week that Seoul would likely come under pressure from the incoming US administration in a regional alliance-building initiative against China.

"South Korea-US and South Korea-China relations are all equally important for us," Moon said. He noted that South Korea and the US are expanding cooperation in other fields that require global cooperation such as trade, culture, health, and climate change.

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But, he added, "relations with China are also very important", given that it is South Korea's largest trading partner. China's cooperation was also "crucial for promoting peace on the Korean peninsula" as Beijing is Pyongyang's closest ally, providing most of its trade and international aid.

"I will make continued efforts to bolster ties with China and to realise President Xi Jinping's visit to Seoul as soon as the Covid-19 pandemic is brought under control," Moon said. Xi is expected to visit South Korea on his first overseas trip this year.

While the close security ties between Washington and Seoul have been in place for 70 years, since South Korean and American-led coalition troops fought against China and North Korea for control of the peninsula, there have been growing domestic calls for Seoul to prioritise its national interests in evaluating the future of its ties with the US.

The diplomatic relationship has been marred in recent years by US President Donald Trump's demand that Seoul cough up an extra US$5 billion every year towards the cost of stationing American troops in the country.

Moon's adviser Moon Chung-in - who bears no relation to the president - described China as a "strategic cooperative partner" for South Korea, terminology associated with the strong and expanding bilateral economic interdependence between the two countries, while saying the US was South Korea's traditional ally.

South Korean President Moon Jae-in speaks to journalists in an online press conference. Photo: Reuters

"Clearly there exists a gap between public perceptions about threats from China in South Korea and the United States," he said.

The president's adviser also added that Kurt Campbell, who will be the Biden administration's top official for the Indo-Pacific and will oversee the US relationship with China, is expected to call on Seoul to clarify its stance in the growing rivalry. This call was first made by Biden when he visited Seoul in 2013 while serving as Barack Obama's vice-president.

The adviser had previously said the growing US-China rivalry would put South Korea in a difficult position, restoring "old 'bloc diplomacy' ... in the form of a new Cold War".

Boo Hyeong-wook, a researcher at the Korea Institute for Defence Analyses (KIDA), said North Korea's provocative acts enhance the possibility of turning the Korean peninsula into a flashpoint of "strategic arms competition" between China and the US.

"If the North crosses the red line such as ICBM [intercontinental ballistic missile] or submarine launched ballistic missile tests, then the US might come up with the call for the deployment of middle-range missiles in South Korea," Boo said. "If this happens, we would face a more distressing situation than the aftermath of the THAAD deployment."

South Korea was hit hard by economic retaliation from China in 2017 when it deployed the highly sophisticated Terminal High Altitude Area Defence to cope with threats from the nuclear-armed North Korea, with China seeing the missile defence system as a direct threat.

The US withdrew in 2019 from the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty signed with the former Soviet Union, freeing itself from commitments to banning the two nations' land-based ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, and missile launchers with ranges of 500-1,000km and 1,000-5,500km.

South Korea hosts 28,500 US troops in the country, whose outdated Army Tactical Missile System (ATACMS) could be replaced with new missiles, possibly new Precision Strike Missiles (PrSMs) with a range of 750km, according to Boo.

"Should PrSMs be deployed on the Korean peninsula, China's naval operations in the Yellow Sea would be seriously restrained as these [surface-to-surface] missiles can also be used as surface-to-ship weapons," he wrote in a report published in October.

"They would impose threats to Chinese strategic assets in the Shandong peninsula and Liaodong peninsula as well," he said.

Kang Seok-ryul of the KIDA said in a report published in December that South Korea must reaffirm a bilateral agreement that the US forces in the country would not intervene in regional conflicts in Northeast Asia without the consent of the Korean people under the Dynamic Force Employment project, which will prioritise maintaining the capacity and capabilities for major combat, while providing options for the proactive and scalable employment of the Joint Force.

"It is necessary [for the two allies] to reaffirm that the primary roles of the US forces in Korea are to maintain deterrence against North Korea," Kang wrote. "This agreement will help prevent the US forces in Korea from being used as part of strategy against China."

This article originally appeared on the South China Morning Post (SCMP).

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