South Korea and Allies Attempt To Paint Rosy Picture Amid Deep Political Turmoil at Seoul

America and its northeast Asian allies, South Korea and Japan, are pasting on their best smiley faces amid the political turmoil in South Korea.Like actors powdered and painted for the roles they’re playing, the allies are repeating familiar lines while obviously frustrated by the simple fact that no one in the leadership circle at Seoul can talk seriously at this moment about defense against North Korea, much less against the North’s two powerful allies, China and Russia.America’s defense secretary, Lloyd Austin, winding up an annual “security consultative meeting” with Japanese leaders, said what he’s always said during visits to the region, that the defense relationship with Korea “is ironclad.”He is confident, he told reporters while on the aircraft carrier George Washington at the naval base at Yokosuka, south of Tokyo, “that it will continue to be that way,” according to the Pentagon transcript. His people at the Pentagon, he said, “have all continued to engage with their counterparts,” maintaining “open lines of communication” while focused on “the task at hand.”Mr. Austin did not need to remind journalists what he’d announced at the outset of his visit to Japan — that he had canceled his plan to stop off at Seoul during his final scheduled go-around of the region before the end of the Biden presidency next month.One person with whom no one’s seemingly in touch these days is the Korean defense minister. That’s because an acting minister, Kim Seon-ho, has taken charge of Korean defense in place of the ousted Kim Yong-hyun, who faces charges for instigating and organizing the abortive six hours of martial law last week at Seoul.Contradicting Mr. Austin’s repetition of familiar upbeat talk about the American-Korean bond, American and Korean military people are keeping their heads down, not discussing prospects for more joint exercises. The South’s president, Yoon Suk-yeol, had been all for war games involving American and South Korean forces, in contrast to the policies of his leftist predecessor, Moon Jae-in; now, though, they’re seemingly the last thing on his mind.Having declared martial law, Mr. Yoon soon after apologized and relented, and he is now hunkered down, silent. Leaders of his People Power Party are calling for him to resign, while the opposition Minjoo, or Democratic Party, attempt to muster the 200 votes needed in the national assembly to impeach him.In the vacuum of leadership at Seoul, senior diplomats rushed over from Washington and Tokyo.If there was one thing that South Korea’s vice foreign minister for strategy and intelligence, Cho Koo-rae, could agree on with America’s assistant secretary of state for East Asia and the Pacific, Daniel Kritenbrink, and Japan’s director-general for Asian and Oceanic Affairs, Hiroyuki Namazu, it was that trilateral cooperation was “more crucial than ever.” Also, Korea’s Yonhap News reported that, yes, they “committed to a firm joint response in case of any provocation.”Such cliches hardly cover the reality that the People Power Party leaders “know that President Yoon has lost the mandate of the people and the power to govern and needs to be removed from the presidency,” a former senior American diplomat, Evans Revere, told the Sun.The head of the People Power Party, Han Dong-hoon, and the prime minister, Han Duck-soo, a former ambassador to Washington, “have adopted a risky approach to arranging Yoon’s ‘orderly resignation,’ perhaps hoping to give the damaged president some dignity and a short interval to leave,” Mr. Revere said. “Their approach has seen them effectively suspend Yoon’s powers to govern — something that the opposition has castigated as being unconstitutional.” Mr. Revere, who spent much of his career analyzing Korean politics at Seoul, is pessimistic. “The clock is ticking on the two Hans as they work to end Yoon’s presidency,” he said in an email. “Failure to quickly convince Yoon to resign will only intensify the current crisis. The two Hans may have only hours, not days, to convince Yoon to go.” As of now, the Korean government is attempting to keep relations on an even keel, giving an appearance of normalcy. Mr. Han Duck-soo called on the American ambassador, Philip Goldberg, assuring him his government was “doing its utmost efforts to manage state affairs based on the constitution and laws.”

South Korea and Allies Attempt To Paint Rosy Picture Amid Deep Political Turmoil at Seoul

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