[Koo Bon-young Column] The Iran Crisis and the ROK-US Alliance in Turbulent Skies

On the 28th of last month, the United States attacked the Islamic Republic of Iran, an anti-American state. This crisis is not a distant fire on the other side of the river. Just look at the talk that a United States Forces Korea (USFK) Patriot missile battery for missile interception might be redeployed to the Middle East. That is why the strange air now hanging over relations between Seoul and Washington is worrisome.
Turbulence is being felt not only in the economic and trade sphere, where the U.S.-origin "tariff bomb" first erupted, but also in the security domain. In the second half of last year, the two sides clashed over the Lee Jae-myung administration’s push for a Korean Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) law. This year, they have been out of sync on combined military exercises and on restoring the September 19 inter-Korean military agreement concluded in 2018.
The current state of this creaking alliance was laid bare in a USFK statement issued on the night of the 24th of last month. The statement essentially declared, "We do not apologize for maintaining readiness." It directly refuted reports that the commander of United States Forces Korea had "apologized" to our military after an F-16 Fighting Falcon was scrambled over the West Sea on the 18th of last month and ended up facing off with a Chinese fighter during training.
When the Ministry of National Defense added that it understood the report to be "partly true," USFK pushed back head-on.
Confusion also arose over the Freedom Shield exercise, held from the 9th to the 19th. The government, mindful of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), took a passive stance, asking the U.S. side to minimize live maneuver training. The line of conflict then extended to the issue of restoring the September 19 inter-Korean military agreement.
If that agreement is revived, including the establishment of a "no-fly zone" around the Military Demarcation Line (MDL) and a halt to live-fire drills, the South’s surveillance, reconnaissance, and response capabilities against the North will inevitably be weakened. USFK opposed the move, warning that "the South Korean military could be restricting its own readiness posture."
At this point, it feels as if guest and host have switched places. This appears to signal that advocates of strategic autonomy are gaining the upper hand over alliance advocates within the Lee Jae-myung administration. Their thinking seems to be that a conciliatory stance toward the DPRK is unavoidable, even at the cost of damaging the Republic of Korea-United States Alliance (ROK-US Alliance), in order to draw Pyongyang back to the negotiating table.
It is a line of reasoning made possible by invoking the so-called "internal approach" that autonomy proponents are fond of.
Yet such wishful thinking appears far removed from reality. Kim Jong Un, President of the State Affairs Commission of North Korea, wrapped up the 9th Workers’ Party Congress last month by flatly declaring that "the Lee Jae-myung administration’s conciliatory attitude is a charade." Coupled with nuclear threats against the South, he also said the South would be "permanently excluded from the category of fellow compatriots," dismissing the possibility of dialogue. The day after the government announced its intention to restore the September 19 inter-Korean military agreement, Kim Jong Un unveiled 50 multiple rocket launchers capable of carrying nuclear warheads, brandishing them as a threat. Why, then, does Kim Jong Un brush aside the Lee Jae-myung administration’s conciliatory gestures, which verge on stalking? He knows that only by giving up nuclear weapons, lifting international sanctions, and revitalizing inter-Korean economic cooperation through renewed dialogue can he revive the DPRK economy. He simply cannot choose that path because he fears that the reality of hereditary dictatorship will be exposed to the North Korean people. As he claimed through the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA), "Successive ruling forces in the South have used opportunities for reconciliation and cooperation to spread their culture inside our society, seeking through that to bring about someone’s change and plotting the collapse of our system." Donald John Trump, the president of the United States, recently had Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro arrested and, a few days ago, eliminated Iran’s supreme leader Ali Khamenei in a decapitation operation. Kim Jong Un is surely aware of this as well. That is why, at the Party Congress, he tried to set the tone by saying there was "no reason we cannot get along" with the United States, provided it abandons its hostile policy. However, the prevailing view is that Trump is unlikely to carry out a decapitation operation against the North. Rather, there is a greater likelihood that Kim Jong Un, in order to avoid such a fate, will cling even more obsessively to strengthening his nuclear forces, effectively taking the South hostage. A person who is asleep can be awakened, but one who is only pretending to sleep cannot be roused. If Kim Jong Un is wholly consumed with preserving his regime, he will not give up nuclear weapons anytime soon. Even if the government offers carrots such as restarting operations at the Kaesong Industrial Complex, the chances that he will readily accept are slim. In the 80-year history of division, a policy that looks only to the North Korean leadership while excluding the people has never once led to genuine peace. Seen in that light, it is unrealistic to expect that the North will respond positively just because the South unilaterally restores the September 19 inter-Korean military agreement. The DPRK military has already accumulated real combat experience, including drone attacks, on the battlefields of Ukraine. Establishing a no-fly zone only on the southern side near the MDL would be tantamount to volunteering to be a sitting duck. Of course, there is no need to go out of our way to provoke the DPRK or to be stingy about dialogue. Rather, this is a moment to reflect on the meaning of a West African proverb: "If you want to go far, carry a big stick along with soft words." It means that even if we do not respond tit for tat to every harsh threat from the North, we must still possess self-defense capabilities—real power. In that context, scaling back joint ROK-U.S. military exercises and voluntarily discarding our own leverage for peace on the Korean Peninsula would be a foolish choice.
kby777@fnnews.com Reporter