Much akin to Britain on 4 July last year, South Korea is now veering leftwards. Seoul only had a protracted two-and-a-half, and not fourteen, years of conservative rule by a leader who declared martial law on a cold winter evening last December. But at a time when security in East Asia is increasingly precarious, the election of Lee Jae-myung as South Korea’s fourteenth president does not bode well for the future if the firebrand’s past statements are anything to go by.
For a man who had ambitions to be as ‘successful as Bernie Sanders’ – a comparison which is hardly a point of pride – it was third time lucky. His failed presidential bids in 2017 and 2022 are now confined to the history books. The South Korean population voted for change after six months of polarising protests in support of and against Lee’s infamous predecessor, Yoon Suk Yeol. These were triggered by his abortive declaration of martial law on 3 December.
We should not be deceived by Lee’s rhetoric, for actions speak louder than words
This election was overshadowed by that December day, without which there would have been no vote. The frustrations of the South Korean population, whether left, right, or somewhere in-between, were evident in a clear vote for change, even if Lee Jae-myung’s 8 per cent victory over his conservative rival, Kim Moon-soo, was smaller than some had predicted. It is hardly surprising that the South Korean population voted for a leftist candidate. Before Yoon Suk Yeol, the last president to be impeached and ousted was the conservative Park Geun-hye in 2017, after which the leftist Moon Jae-in came to power following a landslide victory.
In his inauguration speech, the Lee Jae-myung of old seemed to disappear. Is this really the firebrand who has spent his political career scorning the United States’s bilateral and trilateral alliances with South Korea and Japan as being ‘pro-Japanese’? Hours after his victory, the new South Korean president pledged to strengthen such trilateralism, adopt a ‘pragmatic’ approach to diplomacy, and rely on ‘strong deterrence’ against North Korea whilst seeking to ‘build peace’ with the North ‘through dialogue and cooperation’.
These words may look good on paper, but ‘dialogue and cooperation’ cannot mean appeasing the North at a time when Pyongyang’s aggression is escalating. What is more, North Korea currently shows no intention of reciprocating with talks. It takes two to tango.
But we should not be deceived by Lee’s rhetoric, for actions speak louder than words. For all his claims that he will be a ‘faithful servant’ of the Korean people, the new incumbent faces a litany of criminal charges. One such charge is that whilst serving as governor of Gyeonggi Province from 2019 to 2020, he allegedly facilitated the sending of $8 million (£5.9 million) in remittances to North Korea through a South Korean conglomerate specialising in underwear. These actions – which Lee denies – would hardly be emblematic of a ‘faithful servant’.
Seoul may be nearly 5,000 miles away from London, but the global challenges that its new left-leaning government will face are very much shared by Keir Starmer’s. In the foreword to the recently released Strategic Defence Review, the UK’s Defence Secretary, John Healey, outlined how Britain faces threats that ‘are more serious and less predictable than at any time since the Cold War’. The review emphasised how the growing ties between China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea ‘complicate calculations of deterrence and escalation management across regions’.
North Korea’s heightened security cooperation with Russia, Moscow and Beijing’s assistance to North Korea in evading sanctions and Beijing’s engagement in regional and global aggression are just a few of the shared anxieties faced by Britain and South Korea. London and Seoul should work together, and Lee would be unwise to undergo a U-turn in foreign policy from his conservative predecessor. The two leaders must remind themselves of the Downing Street Accord signed by Rishi Sunak and Yoon Suk Yeol on 22 November 2023, when the now-former leaders agreed to ‘strengthen and deepen our collaboration across security and defence, science and technology, prosperity and trade and energy security’.
But Healey’s rhetoric about being in a new Cold War is not enough. Words must be supported by action. For all Starmer’s claims of Labour’s commitment to spending 2.5 per cent of GDP on defence by 2027, what happens afterwards remains confined to weasel words of ‘ambitions to reach 3 per cent’. If we are in a new Cold War, then we must first look at Britain’s defence spending during the Cold War, where quibbling over 2.5 or 3 per cent was anything but the norm.
If defence spending is allegedly so important to the Starmer government, then why did they sign away the strategic asset of the Chagos Islands and pay Mauritius $30 billion (£22 billion) in so doing? These manoeuvres do not portray Britain as a world-leading power in the eyes of our partners, not least South Korea. In Seoul, the new government must also consider the prospect of increasing its own defence spending and paying more for the US security umbrella. Making the world safe again – whether from North Korea, Russia, China, or others – does not come for free.
Britain’s experience under Starmer offers a useful lesson to our South Korean strategic partner. As we know all too well, a left-leaning government can quickly shift from being a government of the people to engaging in a myriad illiberal practices. At a time of heightened geopolitical threats, South Korea has no time to lose. Whether left-leaning Lee changes his tune in practice remains to be seen, but appeasing enemies must be shunned. Otherwise, as the British history books show, those enemies will win.
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