Anchal Vohra is a Brussels-based international affairs commentator.

Last month, the South Korean Ambassador to the EU took a gentle bow and launched a Korean movie weekend at an independent theater in Brussels. The opening film was inspired by the true story of the abduction of 23 Korean missionaries by the Taliban in 2007 — a reminder of the risks South Korea has taken to prove its worth to its most important strategic partner, the United States.

Currently, however, Seoul’s ties with Washington are under stress. And as South Korea concentrates its energies on greeting its relations with the U.S. on surer footing, the country has little time for its allies in Europe.

Since returning to office, U.S. President Donald Trump has adopted a mercantilist approach to trade, leaving Seoul increasingly trapped between the U.S. and China. He has demanded that Seoul pay $550 billion in investments “upfront” if it wants tariff relief, and that it substantially increase its defense expenditure if it wants to keep the U.S. forces (USFK) deployed as a bulwark against North Korea.

America’s European allies are battling identical dilemmas, being forced to up their defense spending, accept tariffs and promise more than $600 billion in investment from EU in the U.S. Yet, it seems they’re unable to keep their key Asian ally interested in the bloc or NATO in the process.

“The current government is very occupied” with sorting out economic issues at home, and is busy with “the Trump situation,” said Wooyeal Paik, a professor of political science and international studies at Yonsei University.

“NATO-AP4,” he said, in reference to NATO’s four partners in the Indo-Pacific, “is not on the table.”

This is surprising given that over the last three years, Seoul’s ties with NATO had advanced exponentially. Former President Yoon Suk Yeol wanted Seoul to be a global player, and had deemed further cooperation necessary to confront common security threats: “South Korea should no longer be confined to the Korean Peninsula but rise to the challenge of being what I have described as a ‘global pivotal state,’ one that advances freedom, peace, and prosperity through liberal democratic values and substantial cooperation,” he wrote.

Under his leadership, South Korea shared intelligence with NATO on Moscow’s deployment of North Korean soldiers against Ukraine, enhanced cooperation on seemingly benign but increasingly charged files like hybrid warfare, and indirectly supplied much-needed ammunition to Ukraine when Europe fell short. There was even talk of an Asian NATO.

This pro-NATO policy was in part intended to limit Moscow’s revanchism and to discourage China from invading Taiwan. But more importantly, from Seoul’s perspective, it was meant to curtail Moscow’s growing ties with Pyongyang. Seoul has long been worried about Russia supplying military technology to Pyongyang and employing North Korean soldiers and laborers who send money back home, thus aiding the cash-strapped regime.

However, in a dramatic turn of events earlier this year, Yoon tried to impose martial law and was impeached soon after. Subsequent elections then paved the way for Lee Jae-myung — a leader with a rather different worldview, seemingly more open to rapprochement with Moscow and downgrading ties with NATO.

So far, Lee has said he’ll pursue a “pragmatic” foreign policy centered on national interests, a part of which is maintaining ties with China — the country’s biggest trading partner. And to the surprise of NATO’s European members, Lee didn’t attend their high-stakes summit at The Hague this year.

It appears the South Korean leader has prioritized the national economy rather Europe’s security concerns, and he appears reluctant to see security in the Euro-Atlantic and Indo-Pacific theaters as linked.

Plus, there were already murmurs of dissatisfaction in Seoul with a foreign policy that sanctioned Moscow during Yoon’s tenure, with Lee himself reportedly warning against taking a side in the Russia-Ukraine war. He also described Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy as a “novice politician,” asking: “Why should we get involved in someone else’s war?”

Lee sees Russia as a neighbor it must, somehow, reconcile with, not as an enemy.

Along these lines, Russian Ambassador to South Korea Georgy Zinoviev had already predicted better ties between Moscow and Seoul once Yoon was impeached, and he was right: South Korea invited Russian President Vladimir Putin, as well as Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping, for this week’s Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit.

But this doesn’t necessarily mean Lee intends to stop defense cooperation with Europe. South Korea will continue to sell weapons that free up European supplies for Ukraine. And Seoul’s supplies of ammunition to the U.S., which freed up American ammunition to be sent to Ukraine, were also critical to Ukraine’s war effort. 

“South Korea wants to preserve the option of reopening relations with Russia in the future when conditions allow. This is why assistance was deliberately channeled indirectly, mainly through European partners and industrial contracts, rather than by direct lethal deliveries to Ukraine,” observed Arnaud Leveau, president of the civil society research institute Asia Centre.

“Going forward, indirect support will remain the most realistic scenario. Contracts with Poland and the Czech Republic will continue, and these [will] allow Europe to free up stock for Ukraine,” he added.

There is a sense, however, that the policies of South Korea’s new president are still taking shape. That even if domestic compulsions, and the fact that Trump has often expressed warmth toward his Russian counterpart, might have influenced Lee’s calculus, all is not lost.

“For NATO and the EU, the way to keep Seoul engaged is through practical, low-visibility cooperation,” explained Leveau, listing cybersecurity, resilience, and industrial partnerships and discreet intelligence dialogues on maritime Southeast Asia as possible areas for collaboration.

“These concrete areas matter more than big political slogans,” he said. And they may be the key to keeping one of Europe’s most crucial partners in Asia on-side.