Reading some of the comments on stories about this news. I don't see why people think Americans are letting Russia off the hook. If anything, this only reinforces the prevailing Cold War mentality. I saw people calling for war against Russia even though it seems this was a organized crime play. When this was pointed out, the typical response is "Russian organized crime is directly linked to Putin".
I don't think SK has much affinity to China at this point. Being USA's close ally has pretty much beaten this out of them. The poor experience of Joseonjok (ethnic Koreans from China) who are seen as "fake Koreans" or "Korean speaking Chinese" is telling. I would say the only reason that they are able to be more pragmatic than Japan (even though both countries ultimately rely on the USA for their ultimate security), is that even the Americans know it is impossible to bridge the colonial history. Modern Japan trying to destroy Korean people/culture is hard to get over. Even dynasties of China didn't do that. If USA tried to push a full tri-lateral alliance between themselves, Japan, and SK, the backlash would push SK into China's influence beyond economics.
The China-US "decoupling" is basically fake news. The so-called "decoupling" is simply additional layers of abstraction rather than any actual decoupling. The "shift" to India, Vietnam, Malaysia, Indonesia, for electronics assembly work, it is still the same Chinese/Taiwanese companies simply relocating tooling. Luxshare (one of Apple's top suppliers) HQ is in China, but they opened a plant in Vietnam and Malaysia, so the news likes to portray it as decoupling.
