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Lee Soo-hyuck, the newly appointed South Korean ambassador to the US, said that with the US having stated plans to play a “constructive role” toward resolving the issue of South Korea’s withdrawal from its General Security of Military Information Agreement (GSOMIA) with Japan, he viewed it as an “important task in the short term to encourage that” as the ambassador.

Meeting with reporters on the afternoon of Oct. 17 ahead of his planned departure for Washington on Oct. 24, Lee named the final expiration of GOSMIA at midnight on Nov. 22 as the most crucial of the issues facing South Korea and the US.

Noting that the different issues are “all so important that it’s difficult to prioritize any one of them,” Lee went on to say, “In the GSOMIA case, there’s a deadline. The [expiration] is effective at 12 am on Nov. 22.”

He also said he had “spoken with a senior State Department official while visiting the US as a National Assembly member.”

“[The official] said that they couldn’t really do ‘mediation’ [on the GSOMIA issue], but that they would play a ‘positive role’ and a ‘constructive role,’” he recalled, adding that he would “find out about that as the [GSOMIA] deadline approaches.”

When asked by a report what position Seoul would adopt in response to the US-led Indo-Pacific strategy and the Donald Trump administration’s “America first” stance, Lee said, “I think South Korea’s future policy will be dictated by US-China relations.”

“I plan to analyze and research US-China relations [upon taking office],” he added.

Remarking that he “see[s] US-China relations as setting the bearings for South Korean diplomacy,” Lee said, “I would like to make a very good report.”

“We need a very careful and close analysis of the conditions and situation of US-China relations to determine what position South Korea occupies within them,” he continued. “I intend to set up an organization to examine US-China relations and to meet with many China experts in the US to broaden my knowledge and understanding and become fully aware.”

Commenting on the role he can play as ambassador to the US amid a lull in North Korea-US negotiations, Lee said, “I think we’re past the stage of hanging on to every up and down [in North Korea-US relations].”

“If you look back at North Korean strategy and tactics, they create a lot of thunder and lightning and bring in the dark clouds, and then all of a sudden it’s blue sky and the sun is shining brightly,” he observed.

“We’ve been down that road a few times now. We need to develop a strategy with a long-term perspective,” he said. Regarding the failure of the North Korea-US working-level talks to produce an agreement, he commented, “I’m not pessimistic about that.”

“It’s like the kind of speed bump you can expect to find in the [negotiation] process,” he said.

“There are political and diplomatic factors at play in North Korea behaving that way. It’s part of a process.”

Lee went on to say that North Korea-US relations “seem to have reached a different level from the past.”

“Back when I was senior representative at the Six-Party talks, I could never have imagined you’d have this many North Korea-US and inter-Korean summits [two and three, respectively],” he noted.

“With that different level, there’s a greater weight of responsibility on the leaders. Sacrifices can be reduced the most with solutions based on dialogue and negotiation rather than war and military force,” he stressed.

“I think you need the patience to stay optimistic and redouble your diplomatic efforts,” he added.

Responding to comments that Seoul and Washington appeared to be at odds recently on issues such as GSOMIA and their respective shares of costs to station US troops in South Korea, Lee said, “You’re going to have situations where [the two countries’] interests don’t coincide exactly. You’ve got to see that as natural.”

“International relations are relations of conflict, and diplomacy is about resolving that conflict,” he said.

Lee previously served as the director-general of the European bureau of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade (now the Ministry of Foreign Affairs) and as the South Korean ambassador to Yugoslavia before taking on the role of deputy minister and South Korea’s first senior representative to the Six-Party Talks on the North Korean nuclear issue in 2003. Since then, he has served as the ambassador to Germany and as the first deputy director of the National Intelligence Service. He taught at a university before being recruited into politics by then Democratic Party leader Moon Jae-in in 2016. He was elected to the National Assembly with a proportional representation seat in the 20th general election.

By Noh Ji-won, staff reporter

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