A new report says South Korea spends more to influence Washington than Israel, China & Saudi Arabia combined

IN WASHINGTON, THERE IS GROWING UNEASE ABOUT how far and how fast South Korea’s anti-anti-North Korean President, Moon Jae-in, is moving to undermine the pressure of U.S. and U.N. sanctions before Pyongyang takes meaningful steps to disarm. The unease is greatest in Congress, where there is also unease that both Moon and Trump have done so much to legitimize a tyrant who would, in a more just world, be hauled before a tribunal and sentenced to spend the remainder of his life eating stewed vegetables from a stamped sheet metal tray. But with Moon now openly violating U.N. sanctions — and probably U.S. law — why do our journalist-watchdogs in Seoul sleep so silently under their host’s porch? Why do our think tanks (Heritage and AEI being notable exceptions) not politely point out that Seoul is directly undermining stated U.S. policy that Pyongyang will receive no sanctions relief until its disarmament is verified? Could it have anything to do with what happened to the U.S.-Korea Institute recently, or to the American Enterprise Institute years ago, before it stopped taking Seoul’s money? Or to David Straub?

For years, this blog has raised questions about South Korean influence in Washington, and for reasons that should be obvious by now, hardly anyone else in this town will. When I wrote this too-lengthy post on Korea and the Foreign Agents Registration Act, public interest groups like the Sunlight Foundation were still compiling data on foreign influence in Washington, and hadn’t yet gotten around to adding up South Korea’s spending. I expected that sum to be substantial, but even I was gobsmacked by this:

[Open Secrets]

That’s right—South Korea spends more money to influence U.S. policy than Israel, China, and Saudi Arabia combined. Admittedly, this chart doesn’t tell the whole story. Much of Israel’s influence in Washington must come from donations by pro-Israel Jewish-Americans who aren’t subject to FARA registration and whose advocacy enjoys First Amendment protections. Much of China’s influence must come from corporations like Google that do (or want to do) business in China, and have been coopted as China’s lobbyists in exchange for access to its markets.

Then, according to Open Secrets, “[t]he majority of the spending came from a single organization: the Korea Trade Promotion Center (KTPC), a state-funded nonprofit promoting foreign investment and partnerships, which accounts for $45.9 million of the spending” and which “also ranks first among registrants.” Kotra would have you believe that most of its lobbying is commercial rather than political in nature. There is a nexus between security and certain trade policies, but we’ll get to that later. It’s also true that an unspoken part of Kotra’s work is to make influential friends.

The state-funded Korea Trade-Investment Promotion Agency, or Kotra, runs 120 overseas offices in 82 countries. They assist Korean companies trying to make inroads into overseas markets and promote foreign investment in Korea. However, they do not merely serve businesses. One of their unofficial yet important tasks is entertaining lawmakers and senior bureaucrats in the cities around the world where they are stationed.

These so-called VIPs receive red-carpet treatment from the overseas Kotra staff. Packages typically include chauffeur service from the airport, a tour guide with an interpreter, making all the necessary arrangements for the visit, booking rooms, and dining and entertainment.

According to the agency’s report for the National Assembly audit, Kotra provided such top-class services to 668 lawmakers and 1,161 senior bureaucrats and executives from public institutions over the last three years. During the first eight months of this year, about 43 legislators a month relied on the Kotra overseas services.

The visitors who took advantage of these services mostly did so at Kotra branches in famous tourist cities, which implies what their primary purpose really was. Kotra had not hosted a single trade- or investment-related event in Saint Petersburg, Russia, or Madrid, Spain, last year, and yet visits by legislators and government officials were frequent. Those offices were primarily entertaining and guiding public-sector visitors. [Joongang Ilbo]

Some of Korea’s more explicitly policy-related contributions to U.S. think tanks come from groups like The Korea Foundation and the Korea Institute for International Economic Policy, which should register as agents of a foreign principal. KIEP is actually registered as a foreign principal, despite the fact that it actually operates in the U.S. as an agent of the South Korean government, sometimes circumventing its own FARA-registered agent. That’s still better than the Korea Foundation, a gargantuan contributor to U.S. think tanks with a record of trying to censor criticism of Seoul’s policies, and which isn’t FARA registered at all. 

Like Think Progress, I believe that the “FARA still remains woefully under-enforced,” one consequence of which is that Americans still don’t know the full extent of Seoul’s influence over our Korea policy. For example, the Korea Foundation has provided support for research by the Brookings Institution, the Center for Arms Control and Nonproliferation, the Center for Strategic and International Studies, the Council on Foreign Relations, the Korea Society, the Mansfield Foundation, the Wilson Center, and the Korea Economic Institute of America (KEIA), which is registered under the FARA as a foreign agent of the Korean government.1 Experts from these groups are on the contacts lists of journalists who write your news and influence you.

Most other think tanks sent scholars to seminars sponsored by the Korea Foundation, although it’s not clear whether the benefits they accepted went beyond compensation for travel, lodging, and meals. The Korea Foundation also sponsors congressional delegation visits to Korea. Most of the Korea Foundation’s funding comes big donors, several of which are anonymous. The anonymity of those donors raises serious questions, including whether they’re foreign government sources. Others are from South Korean corporations, including Hyundai and Kookmin Bank. The Korea Foundation also brokered a $1 million donation to a small American university from Chung Mong-joon, a wealthy heir to the Hyundai empire and a key corporate supporter of “engagement” with the regime in Pyongyang.

Already, some will want to mischaracterize this argument as anti-Korean, but as the downfall of Park Geun-hye showed, South Koreans view corporate donations to their own politicians with great suspicion. If Koreans worry that cash from the chaebol exerts a nefarious influence on their own politicians, they may know something we should consider.

~   ~   ~

Whatever the qualifiers about Seoul’s spending in Washington, anyone who deals with think tanks, Congress, and government knows that Seoul’s influence here is extensive, and that Seoul has used it to push positions that I certainly view as contrary to U.S. national security interests. As one who approves of our national conversation about Russian influence, I believe we also need a local conversation about South Korean influence. A time when Moon Jae-in’s policies are widening Seoul’s conflict of interests with Washington is a good time to have that conversation.

For example, Seoul is currently lobbying the U.S. government to reopen the Slavery-Industrial Complex at Kaesong, which the previous South Korean government suspected of financing North Korea’s nuclear program, and whose resumption would undermine U.N. sanctions and U.S. national sanctions. In reality, nobody but Kim Jong-un knows where that money went, despite the fact that Seoul, and every bank and investor under its jurisdiction, were and are legally obligated by UNSCR 1718, paragraph 8(d), to “ensure” that their money wasn’t paying for nukes. Thus, at best, Kaesong would violate and undermine U.N. sanctions. At worst, it amounts to a subsidy by our nominal ally and protege of the WMD programs of a regime that now poses a direct threat to the United States itself. So far, the U.S. government is correctly resisting the push to reopen Kaesong. In 2006, Seoul also lobbied to get Kaesong included in its Free Trade Agreement with the U.S., also without success.

Even as Seoul lobbies Washington for the consensus that U.N. resolutions now require, to subsidize Pyongyang through joint ventures like Kaesong, Seoul also lobbies Washington to continue to subsidize Seoul’s own defense from Pyongyang. As one who spent four years as an American soldier in South Korea, I find this to be outrageous and absurd. Certainly, my service in Korea enamored me to Korea’s people, and to many aspects of its culture. It also made me a skeptic of the idea that keeping 28,500 U.S. military personnel in South Korea still serves our national interests or Korea’s graduation into a self-assured democracy. These Americans now live within range of an increasingly serious North Korean threat that our host-nation ally is increasingly unserious about protecting itself from. If the real lesson here is that self-defense is essential to a nation’s acceptance of responsibility for its own policies and protection, Seoul seems to have learned the wrong lesson: that lobbies are cheaper than armies. That is no way to sustain Korea’s nationhood, its security, or its friendship with the American people.

~   ~   ~

1. The Korea Foundation’s 2012 annual report also lists the American Enterprise Institute, but a senior AEI official recently told me that AEI had since stopped taking funds from the South Korean government. With regard to KEIA, at least it complies with the letter and spirit of the FARA by registering itself openly. Also, KEIA does publish views like this one from Bill Brown that (if gently) criticize Moon Jae-in’s brand of engagement.