South Korea-U.S. Relations in a New Era: Ideological and Structural Sources of Continuity and Change

Since the great trial of the Korean War, relations between South Korea and the United States have been shaped both by the currents of domestic ideology and politics and the evolving features of the international landscape. Recent decades have seen a South Korean debate between drawing closer to the U.S. or balancing more evenly between the U.S. and China, alongside a U.S. debate over remaining strongly engaged abroad or pulling back from international commitments. After the end of the Cold War, in a relatively non-threatening, permissive international environment, these approaches could be tried in various forms and combinations without fundamentally altering bilateral relations. In the New Era ushered in by Xi Jinping's China, South Korean and U.S. leaders must make starker, more binary choices between moving closer or farther apart. Moving closer makes more sense and looks more likely.