Can America Count On South Korea To Help With Taiwan? Maybe Not

Japan’s Prime Minister, Sanae Takaichi, is being savaged by China for her common-sense statement that Taiwan is immensely important to Japan.

She’s right. It would pose a grave danger if China took Taiwan and sat astride the shipping lanes through which much of Japan’s energy and trade flow.

And People’s Liberation Army (PLA) forces operating from Taiwan would have free access to the Pacific. Swing north and the PLA surrounds Japan. Move south and it isolates the Philippines and Australia.

And there’s a political angle too. A Taiwan under Chinese Communist control demonstrates that U.S. military and economic power — and even American nuclear weapons — could not keep 23 million Taiwanese free.

Japan will resist, but its alliance with the U.S. would at least be severely weakened. Tokyo would be hard pressed to fend off increasing Chinese pressure.

South Korea Highly Vulnerable

South Korea will be in worse shape than Japan — not least owing to geography. It has no direct outlet to the Pacific and is effectively boxed in by China and North Korea.

South Korea is even more vulnerable to Beijing choking off trade and energy routes as well as direct trade with China. Korean industry also depends on semiconductors from Taiwan.

Chinese and North Korean (and Russian) military pressure, or even the threat of it, would also be crushing.

It’s in South Korea’s interests to keep Taiwan free from Beijing’s control. And there’s plenty Seoul can do to assist a U.S.-led effort to defend Taiwan.

South Korea can take on greater responsibility for defending the peninsula — and surrounding waters and airspace — to take pressure off overstretched U.S. and Japanese forces.

South Korea can also facilitate broader U.S. efforts to defend Taiwan — including permitting use of U.S. bases in South Korea, and providing logistics, intelligence support and missile defense — as well cooperating with Japanese forces for air and naval surveillance.

Seoul can also join sanctions applied against China. If so, South Korea will need support from U.S., Japan and other free nations as Chinese economic retaliation will be fierce. (RELATED: The One Hundred Billion Dollar Hostage)

And South Korea’s political support for the U.S.-led free world’s defense of Taiwan will also be essential.

Plenty of South Korean officials understand Taiwan’s importance. The ROK military does as well.

The South Korean public has no great love for China, and is broadly supportive of providing some level of support — direct or indirect — for U.S. military efforts on behalf of Taiwan.

Will South Korea help?

But here’s the problem. The administration of South Korea’s leftist President Lee Jae Myung that took over in June 2025 leans towards China — despite protestations of being pragmatic and pro-U.S. alliance.

Whether it would help defend Taiwan is questionable.

In a March 2024 speech, Lee Jae-Myung, then-head of the opposition Democratic Party, asked, “Whatever happens in the Taiwan Strait, whatever happens with China and Taiwan’s domestic issues, what does it matter to us?”

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