For decades, South Korea has been one of the most important U.S. allies in Asia — not only because nearly 30,000 American troops are stationed there, but because it stands as a beacon of democracy in a region where powerful authoritarian nations vie with democratic ones.
President Biden has put a special emphasis on South Korea, choosing it as the first non-U.S. site for his annual international conclave, the Summit for Democracy. And in 2023, he hosted President Yoon Suk Yeol for a state dinner at the White House, where the tuxedo-clad Mr. Yoon sang “American Pie” to an adoring audience. Mr. Biden has also relied on Mr. Yoon to provide munitions for Ukraine’s defense against the Russian invasion.
Now, with Mr. Yoon imposing martial law after wildly accusing the opposition party of conspiring with North Korea to undermine him, the American alliance with South Korea faces its biggest test in decades. And Mr. Biden, who has used democracy versus autocracy as a defining framework of his foreign policy, will have to make hard choices on how to handle the crisis, after years of cultivating relations with Mr. Yoon, a conservative leader, and enhancing military ties to better counter China, North Korea and Russia.
Mr. Yoon’s move appeared to catch the Biden administration by surprise.
On Tuesday afternoon in Washington, hours after Mr. Yoon made his shocking announcement, the White House National Security Council released a terse statement, using an abbreviation for South Korea’s formal name, the Republic of Korea: “The administration is in contact with the R.O.K. government and is monitoring the situation closely as we work to learn more. The U.S. was not notified in advance of this announcement. We are seriously concerned by the developments we are seeing on the ground in the R.O.K.”
Officials said that aides had briefed Mr. Biden, who was visiting Angola.
There was speculation in Washington that Mr. Yoon might have chosen this moment because the U.S. government is in a transition from the Biden administration to the second Trump one, and because Mr. Biden is overseas. Mr. Yoon, a first-term president who barely won the 2022 election, has a low approval rating among South Korean citizens, and his move against the opposition party and the legislature has echoes of the effort by Donald J. Trump to prevent Mr. Biden from taking office after he won the 2020 election.
At a U.S.-Japan diplomatic event in Washington, Kurt Campbell, the deputy secretary of state and former Asia adviser to Mr. Biden, said
that “our alliance with the R.O.K. is ironclad, and we stand by Korea in their time of uncertainty.”
He added that “we have every hope and expectation that any political disputes will be resolved peacefully and in accordance with the rule of law.”
The upheaval is particularly stinging for an American president who has made the promotion of democracy one of his top priorities, in part because of the rise of anti-democratic forces in the United States. Seoul hosted this year’s installment of the global democracy summit that Mr. Biden launched several years ago.
At the opening ceremony, Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken hailed South Korea as a democratic model, saying that it was fitting, “even a little bit poignant,” that the country was hosting the event.
South Korea, Mr. Blinken noted proudly, was “a nation that transformed, over a single generation, into one of the strongest, most dynamic democracies in the world, a champion of democracy for the world.”
Mr. Blinken noted the many threats to the democratic model but said that he remained “more than optimistic that we will meet the challenge of this moment.”
The declaration of martial law also raises questions about what the Pentagon might do with its nearly 30,000 troops and assets in South Korea. United States Forces Korea operates under the Indo-Pacific Command and in coordination with the South Korean military. American soldiers are posted by the Demilitarized Zone between North and South Korea and in bases elsewhere in South Korea, including in Seoul, where U.S. soldiers wander the streets in uniform.
One of Mr. Biden’s main strategies for trying to establish deterrence against China has been to build up military relations with allies in Asia. He established a new trilateral security partnership with South Korea and Japan, and last year he hosted Mr. Yoon and Fumio Kishida, then the prime minister of Japan, at Camp David in Maryland to announce the new arrangement, an important achievement given the historical enmity between South Korea and Japan.
Mr. Biden called the two nations “capable and indispensable allies.”
In his remarks, Mr. Yoon said that “the ties between our three countries, which are the most advanced liberal democracies in the region and major economies leading advanced technology and scientific innovation, are more important than ever.”
The three nations, he added, have proclaimed they “will bolster the rules-based international order and play key roles to enhance regional security and prosperity based on our shared values of freedom, human rights and rule of law.”
Adding to the uncertainty are open questions about the incoming Trump administration’s plans for
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