US pressure on Seoul over Huawei taps into fears of North Korea
- Washington hints that access to its sophisticated spying capabilities could be under threat if South Korea does not play ball over China’s 5G giant
- Seoul must weigh the demands of its top security ally, America, and its top trading partner, China
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In an interview published by South Korea’s Donga newspaper on Monday, Randall Schriver, the Pentagon’s top official for the region, issued a veiled warning against embracing Huawei.
“The United States doesn’t want to see a situation arise where we don’t have confidence in sharing sensitive information with our ally and information being safeguarded,” said Schriver, assistant secretary of defence for Asian and Pacific security affairs.
Asked if it would be difficult to share intelligence on North Korea with Seoul if it relied on Huawei technology, Schriver said: “We hope that situation doesn’t come about.”
The comments came just weeks after Harry Harris, the US ambassador to South Korea, issued a similar caution about the Shenzhen-based firm.
Harris told the Chosun newspaper on June 7 the US did not want to “expose sensitive security information to an unacceptable risk level” and would “have to re-evaluate how we share information with allies”.
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“Moon wants to defer any decision-making responsibility on Huawei to Korean companies,” Choo Jae-woo, a professor of Chinese foreign policy at Kyung Hee University in Seoul. “He has no clue as to how the matter constitutes a national security issue.”
Among the country’s three carriers, LG Uplus, the smallest, has tapped Huawei base stations and transmitters for its service, with the others choosing equipment from Samsung Electronics, Ericsson and Nokia.
Huawei, for its part, has taken a low-key approach to its engagements in South Korea to avoid stirring controversy. In May it unveiled an 5G laboratory in the Junggu district of Seoul, but did not invite media to the launch.
Although Moon has not addressed the controversy personally, unnamed officials in his administration have stressed that Huawei’s involvement in 5G services is not connected to networks for use by the US and South Korean military. This month, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said the government would look at measures that “respect corporate autonomy” without impacting the security of military communications.
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The presidential Blue House declined to comment to the South China Morning Post, referring questions to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy.
In April, Robert Strayer, a top cybersecurity official at the US State Department, said Washington would reconsider information sharing with Southeast Asian allies that use the tech giant’s technology.
Daniel Pinkston, a former Korean linguist in the US Air Force who now lectures at Troy University in Seoul, said South Korea’s national security could take a hit without US intelligence gathered through advanced technology such as spy satellites.
“The Republic of Korea does not have the sophisticated ISR [Intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance] platforms that can ‘see’ deep into North Korea near the Chinese border, and therefore intel sharing is important to Seoul to make up for those gaps,” Pinkston said.
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“If the armistice were to collapse and we were to return to wartime conditions, intel sharing would be critical to sustain a combined effort operationally, tactically, strategically, and politically.”
South Korea’s calculation is complicated by its heavy economic reliance on China, to which it sends about one quarter of its exports – not least because of recent memories of economic retaliation by Beijing. After Seoul deployed a US anti-missile defence system on its soil in 2017, Beijing instituted an unofficial boycott of South Korean tourism that cost the industry an estimated 7.5 trillion won (US$6.7 billion) between January and September of that year, according to South Korea’s parliamentary budget office.
Sungku Jang, a fellow with the Asan Institute for Policy Studies in Seoul, said the Moon administration was especially mindful of South Korea’s dependence on Chinese rare earths that are crucial to the country’s electronics industry epitomised by behemoths such as Samsung and LG.
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Chung Chien-peng, a political-science professor at Lingnan University in Hong Kong, said South Korea was unlikely to follow Washington’s stance on Huawei.
“As with most countries in East and Southeast Asia, South Korea hedges; militarily on the side of the United States, and economically on the side of China,” said Chung. “South Korea is not likely to join the US in boycotting Huawei, as Seoul has significant trade and investment interests in and from China, and also because China would be furious if it does.”
Kim, of Hannam University, said Moon appeared to have no alternative but to attempt a precarious balance between Washington and Beijing.
“It is really embarrassing to say, but the Moon government does not know what to do,” said Kim.
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