The U.S.-South Korea chill

LOS ANGELES — A kind of political mystery is forming at the core of the very important relationship between the United States of America and the Republic of Korea, and is eating away at what was once one of the planet's more sincere geopolitical friendships.

With more than 30,000 of their men and women stationed in South Korea, Americans need to listen up and begin worrying whether this once-close ally is drifting off to sea and eventually into the ever-expanding hands of China. Whatever the case, something is definitely happening between Seoul and Washington and it is hard to see how it can turn out to be anything good.

In Washington last week, one of the most lackluster summits in just about anyone's recent memory was held between the presidents of these two democracies. It lasted under two hours, but truthfully, it could have been wrapped up in just 10 minutes and a few seconds.

So cool was the atmosphere between George W. Bush and Roh Moo-hyun that they could have chilled a banquet table full of kimchi to feed all the bored American and Korean secret service agents. Even before the summit was held, both sides had agreed that no formal communiqué would be issued afterwards.

It was that bad.

The key cause of the frost was the two governments' quite different viewpoints on how to negotiate with North Korea. The truth is, nobody that I know of really knows how to do this, including the Chinese, who are Pyongyang's primary aid provider. But Roh acts as if he does — stick with the holdover policy of aggressive engagement; and Bush acts as if he does — don't engage, the North Koreans can't be trusted.

Steven Bosworth, who during the '90s served so superbly as U.S. ambassador to South Korea, just returned from Seoul. He's discouraged: "On the central issue of North Korea I don't see that the gap between our respective positions has narrowed as a result of the summit."

But if the bilateral relationship is not getting better, then it must be getting worse. That's the only conclusion that can be drawn from the trade figures between South Korea and China. The Koreans are now doing more trade with the Chinese than with us in the States. The Bush administration is trying to close a deal on a special free-trade agreement with Seoul, but many issues, particularly on the South Korean side, have to be worked through.

It is getting embarrassingly obvious that a new triangle in Asian-American geopolitics has surfaced, and it runs from Washington to Seoul to China. On North Korea and many other issues, the current South Korean government is arguably closer in content and nuance to President Hu Jintao than George W. Bush.

This growing reality reflects several factors. One is that China's rise in East Asia is exerting a huge gravitational pull on every nation in the region, even Japan.

The second factor is the generational divide in South Korea. The older you are with memories of the heroic U.S. intervention to repel the Communists during the awful Korean War, the higher are the flames of your pro-Americanism. But the reverse is also true: Young people without such memories and with little of their elders' fear in China are the ones who helped elect Roh more than three years ago. They are the ones who are pushing what appears to be an all but inevitable geopolitical realignment.

It could be that the slide will stop once these two presidents, neither one especially popular in their countries (Roh's ratings are actually much worse than Bush's), leave office.

It's possible that I am just a worrywart, and after following South Korea for more than a decade in this column, I should relax and take the long view. But every time I try to do that, something pulls me back into some specific new development. This time it was last week's embarrassing summit.

It was almost irresponsible of these two lame ducks to have offered the world such a low-intensity showing. Why hold a summit at all if it is not going to try to scale the heights of better understanding? I guess I hadn't realized that even lame ducks can paddle backwards as well as forwards.

UCLA professor Tom Plate is a member of the Pacific Council on International Policy.