South Korea, Coronavirus, and the Janus Face of Globalization
By Mason Richey, contributing writer; associate professor of international politics at Hankuk University of Foreign Studies, Seoul, Korea
Thinking back on a decade of developments in South Korea, it is remarkable how prevalent the country has been on the global stage. Ten years ago, this month, president Lee Myung-bak’s “Global Korea” initiative was in full swing and Samsung had just launched the revolutionarily stylish Galaxy-S series. Of course this was also taking place in the shadows of North Korea’s newfound status as a nuclear weapon state and the 2009 H1N1 swine flu outbreak that gripped the world, including South Korea. In the last ten years the world has witnessed the surprisingly misnamed Land of Morning Calm grow ever more into its role as a major axis of tumultuous globalization. As South Korea reels from the whiplash of soft power triumph—Parasite’s many Oscars—followed by the tragedy of a major COVID-19 epidemic, it is worth reflecting on how central South Korea has become to international society, for both good and bad, and how much of that society will persists post-coronavirus pandemic.
2010-2020: May You Live in Interesting Times
2010 brought with it the violent sinking of the South Korean naval corvette ROKS Cheonan, masterminded by North Korea, in which 46 sailors were killed. This was followed by South-North maritime skirmishes along the Northern Limit Line and North Korean shelling of the South Korean island of Yeonpyeong. More positively, 2010 also saw Seoul host the G20, Mokpo hold the first F1 Korea Grand Prix, and Kim Yuna win gold at the Winter Olympics.
The next year was mostly quiet, although the death of North Korean leader Kim Jong-il in December 2011 cocked eyebrows. But 2012 more than compensated. The US-South Korea Free Trade Agreement entered into force, Seoul hosted the Nuclear Security Summit with 55 world leaders in attendance, and the country held a presidential election narrowly won by conservative Park Geun-hye. The Seoul-Washington partnership struggled to understand the direction of North Korea following Kim Jong-un’s assumption of Worker’s Party leadership and the embarrassing failure of the Leap Day agreement. The latter fell apart when Pyongyang launched a Satellite Launch Vehicle (SLV) only weeks after signing.
2013 saw South Korea suffer major cyber attacks by North Korea, alerting the world to the Kim regime’s offensive cyber capabilities (which have now become a major problem). North Korea also carried out its third nuclear test detonation at Punggye-ri. 2014, on the one hand, witnessed the inking of South Korean trade deals with Australia and Canada, as well as a highly successful edition of the Asian Games in Incheon. On the other hand, the Incheon-based Sewol ferry capsized, killing 300 passengers, mostly young students on a class trip. The tragedy captured extensive international media coverage of South Korean political incompetence and corruption. The crass arrogance and indifference of South Korea’s elite were again exposed to international scrutiny by media reporting on the “Nut Rage” incident, in which Cho Hyun-ah, heiress and Vice-President at Korean Air, assaulted cabin crew for their presentation of macadamias, leading to delay of a flight to New York.
South Korea also garnered negative attention in March 2015, as a crazed Korean nationalist with a 25cm knife slashed US Ambassador Mark Lippert in the face and arm prior to a speech in Seoul. In May, South Korea experienced the beginning of a beta-coronavirus outbreak leading to dozens of deaths from Middle East Respiratory Syndrome. South-North tensions flared enormously in August, with both sides firing cross-border artillery. My off the record discussions with US military in South Korea indicated that they were genuinely worried—for the first time ever—that conflict might spiral out of control.
Turmoil marked 2016. Scandalous corruption by and around president Park sparked protests by millions of everyday Koreans—the Candlelight Vigils at Seoul’s central Gwanghwamun Square received extensive international attention for their peacefulness and symbolism in demonstrating the maturation of Korean democracy. They were also powerful, leading to Park’s impeachment and removal from office. North Korea conducted two successful nuclear test detonations, an SLV launch, and multiple ballistic missile tests, putting pressure on the US-South Korea strategy for dealing with Pyongyang. South Korea also closed the Kaesong Industrial Complex, the last major project of inter-Korean cooperation, and started negotiations on installation of a US-provided Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system. China, which objects to THAAD on South Korean territory, has gotten international notoriety for punishing Seoul with unjustified trade restrictions ever since.
Donald Trump assumed the presidency of the US in January 2017, and, on foreign policy, did so with an overriding concern: North Korea’s nuclear weapons program. Inevitably this swept South Korea—and its newly elected progressive president Moon Jae-in—into the tension of a year that became known for “fire and fury.” The world watched with worried fascination as Trump and Kim exchanged threats and insults. North Korea tested its sixth nuclear device, as well as two intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) and medium-range missiles overflying Japan. Washington and Pyongyang were on the brink of war, and global leaders looked expectantly to the South to find a way to provide a diplomatic off-ramp.
President Moon accomplished that with panache, and was rightly feted for it around the world. He deftly used the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang as a springboard for Korean peninsula diplomacy—the sight of North and South teams marching together under a unification flag at the opening ceremony remains an iconic image. Following that, Moon led the way on inter-Korean reconciliation—including summits with Kim—that spilled over to improved US-North Korea relations, which in turn culminated in a Trump-Kim summit in Singapore.
Over the last year—2019 and the first three months of 2020—Seoul and Tokyo have been in an ongoing conflict over historical issues, trade restrictions, tit-for-tat entry restrictions, North Korea policy, and security cooperation, the latter prompting the US to intervene in order to prop up its regional alliance network. The world watched as Trump, Kim, and Moon met briefly together in June 2019 at Panmunjom, on the de facto South-North border, in the hopes that stalled denuclearization negotiations would recommence. South Korea’s soft power has also been at the fore. Two beloved international K-Pop stars committed suicide in late 2019, even as BTS was conquering the global entertainment world. Meanwhile Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite snowballed into an international sensation, becoming the first non-English language film to win the Academy Award for Best Picture. In recent weeks South Korea has been global front page news for its high number of COVID-19 cases, many of which due to a bizarre quasi-Christian sect spotlighting South Korea’s sometimes lurid religious landscape.
No Such Thing As Bad Publicity?
The above history counts more than forty discrete events—almost one a quarter for a decade!—that have received extensive international attention. For a small country located far away from global power centers in Washington, New York, London, Paris, Berlin, or Brussels, South Korea punches way above its weight in terms of international mindshare. Of course a lot of that is negative.
Like Icarus, South Korea is often noticed for the wrong reasons. Nonetheless it has substantial soft power, albeit of a weird sort in which international attraction and repulsion are interweaved. Take Parasite, an astonishing, elegant global film sensation that portrays an unflattering image of South Korea’s yawning gulf of systemic socio-economic inequality. Or COVID-19: the early, fast-moving, massive outbreak has hardly left South Korea in an enviable situation, yet Seoul is receiving accolades for its transparency and competence in testing for cases and managing the epidemic, serving as a model for other countries’ efforts to respond to the coronavirus pandemic.
As the pandemic continues growing, supply chains are disrupted, economies are devastated, and states blame outsiders for the misery, there is a real possibility that the future will be a lot less globalized. Influential mid-sized countries like South Korea may find themselves in a world with fewer links to states both near and far. This would be a shame, as South Korea’s experiences over the last decade have been a valuable microcosm of the human condition. Triumph and tragedy are two sons of the same earth—they are inseparable.