“Coupang is everywhere.” That is what I hear these days whenever I meet people in Washington, D.C., who deal with Korean affairs. The “Coupang controversy,” which began with a personal data leak, has dragged on for more than half a year and is now consuming virtually every aspect of South Korea–U.S. relations. Faced with Coupang’s extensive lobbying across the White House and Congress, the Korean government appears helpless. At a time when the government officials responsible for handling the issue should be moving in lockstep as a single team, the ministries of foreign affairs and trade are instead wasting energy glaring at each other.
Tensions between the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy are nothing new. The two are intertwined over security issues such as the nuclear cooperation agreement and trade matters such as tariffs and investment in the United States. Yet even now, when they should be joining forces over the Coupang issue, signs of mutual discomfort remain evident.
At the Korean Embassy in Washington, for example, behind-the-scenes disputes arise over who should attend and in what capacity when the ambassador meets Korean businesspeople visiting the United States. Conversely, when officials from another ministry go anywhere near the State Department, the Foreign Ministry immediately moves to keep them in check. Both sides constantly complain that “the other side does not tell us anything.”
There was even an episode in which, amid difficulties in negotiations with the United States, the trade minister proposed “bottom-up evaluations” of overseas mission chiefs, only for the foreign minister to respond that “we could handle trade better.”
The situation has deteriorated to the point that President Lee Jae-myung has publicly told the ministries to “get along” and share information. Similar questions are also being raised about cooperation between the Office of National Security and the presidential policy office.
The Coupang controversy has demonstrated that diplomacy and trade negotiations can no longer be conducted separately. A senior Trump administration official I recently met raised his voice and said, “The Korean government needs to understand that all of these issues are connected.”
This is not an argument for casually transferring trade functions from the Industry Ministry to the Foreign Ministry or creating an independent organization modeled on the Office of the United States Trade Representative. The real question is whether, at a time when an issue involving a single company is shaking the alliance, the government is genuinely operating as one team across bureaucratic boundaries. It is also worth asking whether this administration has a control tower capable of drawing up a comprehensive strategy that includes regulatory bodies such as the Fair Trade Commission and the Personal Information Protection Commission.
The Foreign Ministry, for its part, also needs to wake up. It is time to reconsider the closed organizational culture that has long been tolerated because the ministry deals with foreign counterparts and handles large amounts of classified information.
International cooperation, once monopolized by the Foreign Ministry, is now something that every ministry, agency, affiliated institution and local government can pursue. These days, most junior officials entering central government ministries possess language skills and international experience comparable to those of diplomats.
Unless the Foreign Ministry can demonstrate expertise in areas critical to the national interest—such as critical minerals, artificial intelligence and quantum technology—and show that it can lead officials from other ministries, it will become increasingly difficult for it to retain its role as South Korea’s principal representative on the international stage.
If the ministries truly feel compelled to continue their unsightly internal feud, they can do so after they have brought the Coupang controversy to a close.
Posted by Freewhale98