South Korean President Lee Jae-myung of the left-leaning Democratic Party was officially elected on Tuesday, earning 49 percent of the vote.
During a campaign speech in March last year, Lee said that the South Korean government should thank “both China and Taiwan,” which was viewed as a deliberate gesture of goodwill toward China.
In a recent interview with Time, Lee was asked whether South Korea would come to Taiwan’s aid if it were attacked by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
“I will think about that answer when aliens are about to invade the Earth,” he said.
As noted by Japanese media, Lee appears to have quite a weak understanding of the Taiwan Strait issue.
When the Korean War broke out in 1950, then-US General Douglas MacArthur — who also served as commander-in-chief of a 16-nation UN force — traveled to Taiwan seeking support, referring to Taiwan as an “unsinkable aircraft carrier.” Aside from being an important logistics and intelligence base to support the UN’s forces in Korea, it was even more crucial to prevent Taiwan from falling into the CCP’s hands.
From then on, Taiwan was included in the US-led first island chain and — along with South Korea — became an important hub in the Cold War effort to prevent communist expansion.
US Army General Xavier Brunson — commander of the Combined Forces Command and US Forces Korea — during this year’s Land Forces Pacific Symposium in Hawaii said that the presence of US forces in South Korea plays a critical role in maintaining deterrence and ensuring regional security in Northeast Asia in light of the threats posed by China, Russia and North Korea.
Brunson described South Korea as an “island” or a “fixed aircraft carrier” floating in the water between Japan and China, capable of overcoming geographic limitations for Indo-Pacific operations.
Additionally, a strategic memorandum signed by US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth in March explicitly listed “a denial of a Chinese fait accompli seizure of Taiwan” as one of the US military’s top priorities. This implies that the role of US forces in South Korea is likely to expand to include assisting Taiwan’s national defense and deterring a Chinese invasion.
China poses a massive strategic challenge to all of East Asia. Together, the long standing military risks in the Taiwan Strait, “gray zone” tactics in the South China Sea, and the Korean Peninsula’s tense and endless state of confrontation form a precarious triangle in the region. The former two issues are directly tied to China, while North Korea indirectly influences the latter.
There are warnings in South Korea that if China were to invade Taiwan, North Korea would likely seize the opportunity to provoke South Korea. Therefore, a problem for Taiwan is a problem for South Korea.
In South Korea, China’s unofficial ban on South Korean cultural influence for the past decade has led to increasingly negative public sentiment toward China — even surpassing that directed at Japan, which once colonized the Korean Peninsula. As such, any miscalculations in Lee’s China policy would be certain to trigger a public backlash.
Chang Ling-ling is a retired colonel in the armed forces reserves. She is a resident of New Taipei City.
Translated by Kyra Gustavsen
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