TOKYO — The potential impeachment of South Korea’s president after an aborted attempt to impose martial law may complicate U.S. efforts to increase pressure on China under President-elect Donald Trump by undermining American-led alliances in East Asia.

Since taking office in 2022, President Yoon Suk Yeol has steered South Korea away from economic dependence on China and bolstered trade with the U.S., its sole security treaty ally. At the same time, Yoon has broken through historical tensions with Japan to form closer military, diplomatic and economic ties.

The strengthening U.S.-South Korea-Japan relationship has been a key component of a broader Washington effort to stitch together partnerships across Asia seen as blunting Beijing’s ambitions. Yoon’s brief and botched attempt to declare martial law — and the president’s possible downfall as a result — is a “potentially huge setback” to those efforts, said Richard McGregor, senior fellow for East Asia at the Lowy Institute in Sydney.

“The unraveling of the Yoon presidency is great news for China and bad news for the U.S. and Japan,” McGregor said. “No South Korean president in recent times had put more on the line to improve ties with Tokyo, something Washington had pushed for for years.”

In the aftermath of this week’s upheaval, the U.S. and South Korea decided to postpone several bilateral meetings, including one focused on nuclear issues and a related tabletop exercise, a South Korean Defense Ministry official said.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Wednesday that Washington is closely watching the developments in Seoul, adding that South Korea “is one of the most powerful stories in the world about the emergence of democracy and democratic resilience, and we’ll continue to look to Korea to set that example.”

Yet with Trump set to take office on Jan. 20, there’s a real possibility officials in Seoul will be tied up addressing domestic political divisions just as the new U.S. administration is looking to sustain pressure on China and weighing powerful new tariffs that could impact South Korea’s trade-dependent economy.

“Beijing has never liked the trilateralism facilitated by Yoon’s leadership,” said Evan Medeiros, a senior adviser at The Asia Group consultancy in Washington. “Beijing is happy with any political instability that could create frictions between the U.S. and South Korea and/or South Korea and Japan.”

Fresh Opportunity

To be sure, new leadership in both countries could also open up opportunities as well.

“The next administration in Washington will probably have to deal with a new administration in Seoul and the two partners will have the chance to re-focus the alliance,” said Drew Thompson, a senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore.

That could work out well, he added, if the focus centers on new trade deals or easing tensions with Pyongyang and Beijing.

For now, Yoon’s political future is in serious doubt after South Korea’s opposition parties quickly rallied on Wednesday to file a proposal to impeach him. If the motion is approved by parliament and the constitutional court, South Korea would hold an election to vote in a new president within 60 days.

One of the leading contenders in any potential election is Lee Jae-myung, the head of the left-leaning opposition Democratic Party. Lee narrowly lost to Yoon in the 2022 presidential election and has advocated greater autonomy for South Korea amid competition between the U.S. and China. Lee has also been critical of Yoon’s willingness to warm to Japan, the colonial master of the Korean peninsula from 1910 to 1945.

In an interview with Bloomberg last year, Lee criticized Japan’s plans to release treated water from the ruined Fukushima nuclear plant as a “provocation to all of us,” despite an approval of the plan by the International Atomic Energy Agency.

And while South Koreans across the political spectrum are wary of China’s growing regional power, in the Bloomberg interview Lee said he wanted a less adversarial relationship with Beijing to help the South Korean economy.

“We need to try to separate the military-security issues from the economic issues a little bit more,” he said.

About 28,000 U.S. troops are based in South Korea, which never signed a peace treaty with Pyongyang after an armistice took hold in 1953.

Yoon could still find a way to hold on to power or get replaced by a like-minded candidate from his ruling People Power Party. Opinion polls show the most popular contender is party leader Han Dong-hoon, who moved quickly to reject the president’s decision to impose martial law.

Han would likely uphold Yoon’s tough line on North Korea and sustain a similar emphasis on alliances. Under Yoon, South Korea has formed closer ties with regional democracies such as Australia and the Philippines, as well as international groups including NATO.

Yoon has also been a staunch advocate of support for Ukraine, particularly after North Korea dispatched troops and weapons to help Russia in its war of aggression. This week’s upheaval could throw that commitment into doubt. Last week, Ukraine’s defense minister visited Seoul on a trip widely viewed as a bid to obtain weapons supplies.

Leif-Eric Easley, a professor of international studies at Ewha Womans University in Seoul, said Yoon’s attempt to impose martial law may be ultimately more damaging for South Korea’s domestic politics and international reputation than the Jan. 6, 2021, attacks on the U.S. Capitol by a mob protesting the 2020 election results.

If Yoon is forced out or leaves office voluntarily in the next few weeks, it might mean the country would have a caretaker leader just as the Trump administration gets to work, raising questions of whether the allies would coordinate well. A provocation by North Korea, such as a nuclear test or major missile launch, could test that partnership.

For now, Pyongyang has been relatively quiet. Rachel Minyoung Lee, a senior fellow with the 38 North program at the Stimson Center, predicted it would stay that way.

“I don’t think that we should expect North Korea to do anything disruptive, such as carrying out a major provocation, because it doesn’t have to,” Lee said in an interview on Bloomberg Television. “North Korea can just kind of sit back and see what happens.”

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(With assistance from Colum Murphy.)

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