SEOUL — After having had no ambassador to South Korea for more than a year, President Biden has tapped Philip Goldberg, whose job more than 10 years ago was to get the United Nations to enforce sanctions on North Korea. Mr. Goldberg has a long background as ambassador to countries with difficult relationships with America, including Bolivia, the Philippines, and, most recently, Colombia. Korea looks to be his biggest challenge yet.What took Mr. Biden so long to name him? One answer is the administration has been so consumed by the Ukraine situation that it’s hardly had time for interaction with Korea’s outgoing president, Moon Jae-in, who’s barred by the constitution from running for a second, five-year term. Like it or not, however, policymakers in Washington will have to consider seriously how to deal with Mr. Moon’s successor after voters on March 9 choose between the left-leaning Lee Jae-myung and the hawkish conservative Yoon Suk-yeol.Even with Mr. Goldberg designated as ambassador, getting him to Korea won’t be easy. Senator Cruz has been blocking approval of dozens of ambassadorial appointments while calling on Mr. Biden to act decisively against Russia’s dream of shipping natural gas through a new pipeline to Germany. As long as Mr. Cruz stands fast, the appointments don’t get out of the Foreign Relations Committee and onto the floor of the Senate, where history shows they’re likely to be approved by overwhelming bipartisan vote.The charge d’affaires at the U.S. embassy in Seoul, with years of diplomatic experience, can run diplomacy day by day, but real diplomacy isn’t routine when you consider the difficulties between the U.S. and South Korea.Right now, Washington and Seoul disagree on how to deal with North Korea, and the Americans are too diplomatic to denounce the end-of-war declaration that Mr. Moon is demanding as nonsense. Instead, they talk about the historic, unshakeable, unbreakable bond between the U.S. and the Republic of Korea. At every opportunity, they echo Mr. Moon’s calls for dialogue with the North. Then, contrary to what President Moon wants to hear, they also demand that North Korea get rid of its nukes before any deal is possible.In fact, the rift between the U.S. and Republic of Korea on how much to concede by way of appeasing North Korea may be yet another reason that Mr. Biden has been slow to name an ambassador. You won’t hear anyone officially making that point, but the unspoken word in Seoul is that Mr. Biden would have moved faster if Washington and Seoul were on the same wavelength.The suspicion is that the Americans have been waiting to see the outcome of the Korean presidential election. It would be easy to conclude that Washington supports Mr. Yoon, as he’s calling for rebuilding great ties with the U.S. and, unlike Messrs. Moon and Lee, demanding North Korea give up its nukes as a prerequisite to anything. Mr. Lee has shown how simpatico he is with North Korea by calling on Mr. Yoon to retract that statement, and North Korea is saying Mr. Yoon should retract his entire candidacy — that is, not run at all. Wouldn’t it be great, some Americans and Koreans are saying, if Mr. Yoon were to restore the U.S.-South Korea alliance to the good old days?This view has a few flaws. One is that Mr. Yoon’s election might precipitate a North-South Korean showdown, replete with mounting threats and unpredictable incidents. Another is that Mr. Yoon, if elected, might backtrack and adopt a softer stance just to head off a potential crisis. For that matter, Mr. Lee, if elected, might not want to undermine or ruin the alliance with the U.S. by making concessions to the North without guarantees of anything substantive in return.No one can be sure what’s really going to happen between North and South Korea until, well, it happens. That uncertainty is another reason for Washington to pursue a policy of watchful waiting regarding the outcome of the election. Mr. Goldberg, assuming he becomes ambassador without too much hassle, should be arriving in time to see which way the winds are blowing from both Seoul and Pyongyang with a new man in the Blue House, the center of power in South Korea.
