South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol was in Washington, D.C., last week for a state visit as the two countries mark the 70th anniversary of their formal alliance this year.
But while attention was on Washington, Honolulu occupies a special place in the relationship between the two countries. This year also marks the 120th anniversary of the beginning of Korean immigration to the United States. The Hawaiian Islands were the first place Korean immigrants arrived as many fled Japanese imperial rule, and Honolulu would emerge as an important hub for the Korean independence movement.
“Early Korean immigrants arrived as workers on sugar cane plantations in Hawaii,” Yoon said Thursday during an address to Congress. “Since then Korean Americans have made their way into many parts of the American society. They have played an important role fostering closer friendship and writing the history of our alliance.”
Longtime Hawaii lawmaker Sylvia Luke, herself an immigrant, became the state’s first Korean American lieutenant governor in 2022, and serves as the Hawaiian Islands and the Korean Peninsula seem as closely tied as ever.
According to data from the state Department of Business, Economic Development and Tourism, South Korea is Hawaii’s No. 2 source of international imports and No. 6 international export market with cars, fuel, food, cosmetics and other goods moving between South Korea and Hawaii.
South Korea’s Honolulu Consulate also has the only military attache office the country maintains in the United States outside of its embassy in Washington, D.C. Oahu is the home of U.S. Indo-Pacific Command and is the nerve center for U.S. military operations in the region, making it a key diplomatic outpost for Seoul as South Korean officials coordinate with American policymakers amid simmering geopolitical tensions.
Ralph Cossa, the WSD-Handa Chair in Peace Studies at the Honolulu-based Pacific Forum, said President Joe Biden and Yoon “claim the alliance has never been in better shape, since that’s what presidents always proclaim, but it has the added benefit of being pretty much true right now. … There is great bipartisan support, both in the U.S. and in Korea, for the alliance at a time when there is bipartisan agreement on little else in both countries.”
A key issue for leaders in both countries is Pyongyang’s missile program. North Korea has been a nuclear power since detonating its first nuclear warhead in 2006, and has been proactively developing and testing a range of missile systems since.
In 2022, North Korea launched 95 ballistic and other missiles — more than in any previous year — even as it faced harsh sanctions. This year Kim Yo Jong, the prominent sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, said North Korea would turn the Pacific Ocean into a “firing range” in response to joint naval exercises by South Korea, the United States and Japan off the Korean Peninsula.
On Wednesday, Yoon and Biden unveiled a new plan to counter North Korea’s nuclear ambitions that calls for increased military cooperation between the two countries, which officials said had long been in the works. Biden told reporters that a nuclear attack would “result in the end of whatever regime” attempted it.
“For me, I don’t have any doubt about the U.S. commitment to extended deterrence, but the Korean public is still worried,” said Consul General Hong Seok-in, South Korea’s top diplomat in Honolulu. He was referring to polling in 2022 that found many South Koreans favored the return of U.S. nuclear weapons to the peninsula or even developing their own.
“More than two-thirds of the public answered favorably whether we need to deploy the U.S. tactical weapons in South Korea,” said Hong. “So we need to send a strong message not to just to North Korea … but also we need to send reassurance to the (South) Korean public.”
North Korean missiles have also been a hot-button issue in Hawaii ever since a false nuclear missile alert in 2018 terrified island residents amid heightened tensions. In 2022, after a North Korean ballistic missile test on Oct. 3 soared over Japan before plunging into the Pacific Ocean, the Hawaii Emergency Management Agency tweeted that “authorities in Japan alerted the public and advised they take shelter. At this time NO threat to Hawaii is anticipated.”
“The North Koreans don’t mind being hated, but they hate to be ignored,” Cossa said. He argued that when it comes to North Korea’s missiles, “none of this should be of particular concern to us in Hawaii. Kim Jong Un is not crazy and certainly isn’t looking for an excuse to start a war, and would be lucky to find the Hawaiian Islands on a map, much less hit them with his extremely inaccurate missiles.”
But James Minnich, a professor at the Daniel K. Inouye Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies in Waikiki, said North Korea’s missile capabilities are becoming increasingly sophisticated and that the situation around the peninsula has become much more dangerous as both sides take more aggressive postures.
“Our ability to influence North Korea is probably at as low of a position as it’s ever been,” said Minnich. “I think that for a long time, (both South Korea and the United States) believed we might be able to have some positional power with the North. … I believe that to whatever degree that might have been true at one time, it no longer does exist.”
He said increased missile tests by North Korea and increased military maneuvers by South Korea and the United States have both turned up the heat and created risks for further escalation, warning that “all sides depend on another side to interpret their intent and their meaning when they do things, and that is dangerous, when you yield to another side the burden of accurately interpreting what you’re doing.”
Escalating tension between China and Taiwan in particular has raised concerns of the potential for conflict in the Pacific. The establishment of blockades or the breakout of armed violence in the disputed South China Sea potentially could shut down commercial shipping and usher in world-changing economic impacts.
“Nowadays the U.S. sees Australia and Japan as very crucial partners in preserving its own Indo-Pacific interests,” said Hong, the consul general. “Please do not forget, we are also here to be your friends and to be your partners and collaborators in pursuing your own policy in the Pacific strategy here in the region.”
In 2022, Seoul released its own Indo-Pacific strategy that called for greater South Korean engagement in places ranging from Southeast Asia to the shores of East Africa. South Korea’s only land border is with North Korea, making the country largely dependent on maritime shipping to connect with the outside world, and much of the goods moving in and out of the country move through the South China Sea.
South Korea is one of the world’s top shipbuilding nations and lately has built up its capacity for building warships to replace the hand-me-down American military vessels it once relied on as it builds up a more modern, and more active, navy to protect its interests at sea and beyond.
“Korea has always been inward-looking and preoccupied, rightfully, with the North Korean threat,” said Cossa. “But this appears to be gradually changing as it adjusts to its ‘middle power’ status.”
But though Seoul has continued to partner with Washington on military issues, 25% of South Korea’s trade is with China. That relationship has been instrumental to South Korea’s economic boom that transformed it from a major recipient of foreign aid into an economic power house that now exports aid and whose companies are investing around the world.
The United States is a key trading partner for South Korea in its own right, but South Korean leaders accused it in 2022 of lobbing them a curveball when Biden signed the $430 billion Inflation Reduction Act into law.
The legislation contained several provisions aimed at curbing inflation as well as combating climate change, including tax credits for buying electric vehicles. But a provision in the act excludes tax credits for EVs from foreign automakers such as South Korea’s Hyundai, which in 2022 pledged to make massive investments in the United States.
Hyundai subsidiary Kia was second only to Tesla in EV sales in the United States in 2022. Kia has been making inroads to the Hawaii market though dealerships in the islands, where there has been a push to encourage more EVs on the road to align with the state’s clean- energy goals.
“We support the U.S. effort to bring back the manufacturing base in to the U.S. territory; that’s why Samsung and Hyundai had decided to invest a lot of money to install the factories there. … So it would be unfair for the U.S. to treat the Korean companies like Chinese companies,” Hong said.
Cossa said he recently attended an international meeting that included South Korean and Chinese experts discussing trade and other issues.
“The China experts took great delight in frequently mentioning the IRA as an example of American protectionism — the proverbial pot calling the kettle black,” said Cossa. “The IRA provided China a stick to beat us with, and they have enjoyed using it in an effort to create tensions in our alliances.”
But Hong said ripples aside, he sees the relationship between the United States and South Korea only growing stronger in the future. He argued that the two countries are not just closer politically, but culturally closer than ever before.
“The people-to-people exchanges, the culture-to-culture exchange, is so important,” said Hong. “When I was young, I grew up by watching the American movies and American TV shows like ‘The Six Million Dollar Man.’ Nowadays, interestingly, the young American generation grows up by watching the Korean dramas and listening to K-pop.”
On Wednesday, Hawaii’s U.S. Sen. Mazie Hirono and other lawmakers introduced the Partner With Korea Act, which would create an allotment of 15,000 high-skill work visas for South Korean nationals with specialized education and expertise so long as potential employers can ensure the visa holders are not hired for positions that American workers could fill.
“The United States’ partnership with South Korea is critical to both of our countries and economies,” Hirono said in a news release. “Expanding the E non-immigrant visa category will help further strengthen trade between our nations while increasing the number of qualified workers in the U.S. as we welcome President Yoon to Washington.”
