South Korea doesn't need to pick between US and China, says presidential candidate Lee Jae-myung

South Korea should not feel forced to take sides between the US and China, and instead take its rightful place on the world stage as the 10th largest economy and a leading military power, according to presidential hopeful Lee Jae-myung.

He added that if elected, he would seek US support for South Korea to have its own nuclear-powered submarines to better counter threats from North Korea, while calling for sanctions on the hermit state to be eased. This would push forward denuclearisation talks that have stalled since a summit between former US president Donald Trump and Kim Jong-un collapsed in 2019.

Lee mentioned the Aukus alliance among the US, Australia and Britain that would see Australia build nuclear-powered submarines using US technology.

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"It is absolutely necessary for us to have those subs. They are not weaponised in themselves, and technology transfer is under way to Australia," he said in an interview with the South China Morning Post and two other media outlets.

"We can definitely convince the United States, and we have to."

China has characterised the Aukus alliance as an effort to counter its influence that could hurt regional stability.

But Lee also stressed that Beijing was Seoul's "strategic cooperative partner" even as it remained in a "comprehensive strategic alliance" with the US.

"At the same time, we must not put relations with China on the back burner as it is our largest trade partner and we can't dismiss its role," he said, referring to the sway Beijing holds over Pyongyang as the North's main ally.

Current President Moon Jae-in's Democratic Party has nominated Lee, 57, as their candidate for the March presidential polls.

Since declaring his bid for the presidency in July, Lee has repeatedly signalled a desire to pursue an "independent diplomacy solely based on national interests" - though if elected, he is not expected to deviate much from the foreign policy of outgoing president Moon Jae-in's administration.

In practice, South Korea generally aligns itself with the United States, its long-time defence ally, and polls show that some eight in 10 Koreans have a favourable view of Seoul's alliance with Washington. This year alone, Moon has joined President Joe Biden's virtual democracy summit, the G7 summit in Britain and a meeting of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue on pandemic cooperation.

Relations with China, meanwhile, have thawed since a diplomatic dispute over South Korea's deployment of the US Terminal High Altitude Area Defence (THAAD) missile system led Beijing to impose an economic boycott - yet some seven out of every 10 Koreans still hold a negative view of China, according to opinion polls.

If elected, Lee said he would honour the 2017 agreement that restored bilateral relations, "barring exceptional circumstances", and uphold the three promises Moon made to Beijing regarding no further THAAD deployment, not joining a US-led global missile defence network, and not establishing a formal trilateral military alliance with the US and Japan.

By contrast, Lee's rival Yoon Seok-youl - a former prosecutor running on the conservative People Power Party ticket - has said he would ditch South Korea's policy of "strategic ambiguity" if elected and align the country more explicitly with the US to "show the world that South Korea also endorses values commonly shared by civilised countries". He has also said further THAAD deployments are a possibility.

According to three opinion polls published on Thursday, Lee is leading Yoon by a margin of six to 11 percentage points. Support for Yoon has waned over a series of gaffes and controversies, including allegations that his wife cheated on her academic credentials and career experience to secure jobs.

Since the collapse of the Hanoi summit in 2019, Pyongyang has rebuffed US proposals for denuclearisation talks to resume amid cries of Washington's "double standards" and its "hostile policy" towards the North.

Lee called for "phased, simultaneous steps" to end the impasse, suggesting that both sides end calls for the other to show sincerity and instead move towards a settlement - whereby the US eases sanctions on North Korea that can be reimposed as a "snapback" measure if Pyongyang fails to halt its nuclear activity.

Washington is currently preoccupied elsewhere, however, as concerns mount over Russia's military build-up along its border with Ukraine, an increasingly combative China and Iran engaging in nuclear development.

On South Korea's ties with fellow US ally Japan, which have become increasingly fraught in recent years over territorial disputes and the legacy of Japan's wartime occupation of the Korean peninsula, Lee said he supports a "two-track" approach to defuse tensions while moving forward towards a "future-oriented" relationship.

"We don't need to link such issues with others such as social, economic and cultural exchanges," he said.

A political outsider, Lee was born into poverty in Andong-gun, North Gyeongsang province, in 1964 and began his working life in a factory at age 12. After badly injuring his left arm in an industrial accident while still a teenager, he was exempted from South Korea's compulsory military service - instead dividing his time between night school and factory work during the day.

Later advancing to law college, Lee passed the country's highly competitive bar exam and went on to become an eloquent and widely read lawyer. He was elected mayor of Seongnam city in 2010, serving until 2018 when he became governor of the surrounding Gyeonggi Province, which also encompasses Seoul.

He has successfully campaigned on bold social welfare programmes that his opponents have criticised as "populist" policies.

This article originally appeared on the South China Morning Post (SCMP).

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