The Trump administration’s 2025 U.S. National Security Strategy (NSS) redefines South Korea from a standalone security theater to an economic and military contributor to U.S. priorities elsewhere, marking a structural shift in how Washington frames the alliance and the Korean Peninsula.

This recalibration is evident less in what the document announces than in how it organizes attention. Across its substantive text, the strategy concentrates on China’s economic model, trade imbalances, industrial overcapacity, maritime access, Taiwan deterrence, alliance burden-sharing and the Western Hemisphere.

South Korea appears only where it intersects with those priorities, and the Korean Peninsula is no longer treated