Biden-Yoon agenda

Nukes, Ukraine and semiconductors top Biden-Yoon agenda

The two leaders are signing an agreement that will send U.S. nuclear-armed subs to South Korea for the first time in decades.

By PHELIM KINE

South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol’s visit to Washington this week is hitting on three incendiary issues: nukes, Ukraine and the technology tug-of-war with China.

Yoon and President Joe Biden are coming together to toast the 70th anniversary of the U.S.-South Korea mutual defense treaty which committed the two countries to assist each other in the event of “armed attack and communist subversive activities.”

But their meeting coincides with South Korea feeling particularly vulnerable to North Korea’s military threats and China’s increasingly expansive power projection in the Indo-Pacific — and wanting assurances that the U.S. is ready with support.

The U.S., meanwhile, has some big asks for the government in Seoul as it works to cement South Korea as a regional cornerstone in its effort to rally democracies against China, Russia and other autocratic countries.

A Nuclear Pact

The U.S. and South Korea announced a new agreement on Wednesday that reinforces the U.S. commitment to defend Seoul in the event of an attack by Pyongyang, just ahead of Biden and Yoon’s meeting at the White House.

In the agreement, called the Washington Declaration, the U.S. commits to taking steps to strengthen its military support for South Korea, while Seoul publicly disavows any intention to develop nuclear weapons, said senior administration officials who briefed reporters on condition of anonymity ahead of the announcement.

One commitment the U.S. has made is to regularly dispatch “U.S. strategic assets” into South Korean waters, including an upcoming port visit by a U.S. nuclear ballistic submarine, the first such deployment since the 1980s, one of the officials said. The countries have also agreed to create a joint U.S.-South Korean Nuclear Consultative Group designed to provide transparency to Seoul on U.S. military planning.

South Korea has been looking for such assurances amid Pyongyang’s nuclear saber rattling. North Korean leader Kim Jong-un threatened an “exponential” increase in nuclear weapons targeting Seoul in January, and urged the mass-production of short-range missiles that could menace the south. South Korea lost its decades-long positioning of U.S. nuclear weapons on the peninsula in 1991 when President George H.W. Bush ordered their removal in a failed effort to encourage North Korea to abandon its own then-nascent nuclear weapons program.

The new declaration outlines “a series of steps that are designed to strengthen U.S. extended deterrence commitments and strengthen the clarity by which they’re seen by the Korean public as well as by neighbors in the face of advancing [North Korean] nuclear missile capabilities,” the official said.

The Biden administration’s requirement that Seoul renounce the development of nuclear weapons reflects nervousness that South Korea is considering doing just that.

In January, Yoon floated the possibility of South Korea developing its own nuclear weapons capability as a deterrent to Pyongyang’s threats. He walked back that idea a week later, but South Korean concerns about the country’s vulnerability to North Korean attack persist. Those concerns are partly due to “a lack of confidence in the U.S as a committed ally,“ said former ambassador to South Korea Harry Harris.

Public polling last year found that more than 70 percent of South Koreans wanted a nuclear weapons capacity to counter North Korea’s.

Former national security adviser John Bolton on Tuesday urged the Biden administration to reposition tactical nuclear weapons in South Korea as a deterrence message to North Korea. The Biden administration says that’s not going to happen. “There is no vision of returning U.S. tactical or any other kind of nuclear weapons to the Korean peninsula as there was in the Cold War,” a second senior administration official told reporters at the briefing.

The Biden administration faults Beijing for not using its diplomatic and economic leverage to curb North Korea’s threats to South Korea. “We have been disappointed that China has been unprepared to use its influence and good offices to weigh in clearly with North Korea about its many provocations,” the first senior administration official said. To mitigate any potential misunderstandings the Chinese might have about the expanded U.S. military presence, the administration is briefing Beijing on its details “and laying out very clearly our rationale for why we are taking these steps,” said the official.

Arming Ukraine

But Yoon can also expect pressure from Biden to supply munitions to Ukraine. South Korea provided Ukraine $100 million last year and responded to Biden’s call for more such assistance with a $130 million pledge last month to support Kiev’s energy infrastructure and humanitarian needs.

But Ukraine’s depleted ammunition stocks have prompted both NATO Secretary-General Jen Stoltenberg and the Biden administration to push Seoul to provide Kyiv munitions. Seoul says its Foreign Trade Act bars selling weapons to countries at war or for re-export to third countries.

“President Biden will hope to have a conversation with President Yoon about what it means for all like-minded allies who continue to support Ukraine through a difficult few months and will want to know what Seoul is thinking about what the future of their support might look like,” said the second senior administration official.

Biden may make Yoon’s agreement to override that restriction “part of the price of admission,” to his White House meeting, said David Rank, former Charges d’Affaires at the U.S. embassy in Beijing and veteran Korea desk official at the State Department.

Seoul “has been historically good at helping out quietly when the U.S. asks it to,” Rank said.

Tackling Tech and China

The two sides will also have to navigate some thorny economic issues spawned by recent Biden administration legislation. Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act in 2022 included a provision that reserved a tax credit for electric vehicles to domestically produced cars, locking out EV imports from South Korean automakers including KIA and Hyundai.

The Biden administration also wants Yoon to block South Korean semiconductor manufacturers from filling any shortfall in chips created by Beijing’s possible ban on sales by the U.S. company Micron, the Financial Times reported on Sunday.

Yoon is looking for reassurance that “Biden’s economic agenda is not a protectionist one and we’re going to work together on issues like export controls and friend-shoring,” said Kathleen Stephens, former U.S. ambassador to South Korea.

Those issues are on the Biden-Yoon agenda, but there is no hint of any breakthroughs. “The leaders will be discussing semiconductors and mutual [economic] approaches tomorrow,” the first senior administration official said, declining to provide more details.