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Korea – The U.S. and South Korean governments have both hailed the “Washington Declaration” by the two nations’ presidents as measures that will strengthen an alliance that turns 70 this year.
But Wednesday’s declaration has been met with mixed reviews in Seoul. Some, especially from the ruling party, are favorable, and suggest that the deal will ease anxieties about the threat the South faces from North Korea’s ever-larger nuclear arsenal. But there has also been an outpouring of criticism that the deal resulted in Seoul giving more than it got — and that it could make South Korea’s neighborhood a more dangerous place.
President Biden promised this week that any North Korean nuclear attack against the U.S. or its allies “will result in the end of whatever regime” launched it. Biden’s remarks were apparently intended to deter North Korea, but some in Seoul did not find the promise of U.S. nuclear retaliation very comforting.
“Isn’t everything over for the Korean Peninsula the moment North Korea launches a nuclear attack?” opposition Democratic Party lawmaker Youn Kun-young asked in an interview with Korean broadcaster CBS radio. “No one on this small peninsula will be spared,” he said. “What good will it do to strike back?”
One feature of the declaration is the promise to establish a consultative body intended to give Seoul more of a say in how the allies deter North Korea.
The people of South Korea will “feel that they are sharing nuclear weapons with the United States,” enthused South Korean deputy national security adviser Kim Tae-hyo.
But Edgard Kagan, the U.
