South Korea's Progressives Need to Grow Up in the Age of Trump

On November 10, a South Korean lawmaker from the main opposition Minjoo Party, Rep. Yun Ho-jung, said he would seek a dismissal motion against Defense Minister Han Min-koo if South Korea continues to move forward to sign the Security of Military Information Agreement - an agreement with Tokyo to share military intelligence on North Korea.

This came on the heels of the country’s three opposition parties having released a joint statement a day earlier where they expressed their opposition to the agreement claiming that it would escalate geopolitical tension in and around the Korean Peninsula. Today, they reaffirmed that threat.

When one considers the progressives’ position for even a moment, one realizes that the claim makes no sense whatsoever. The need to share intelligence with Tokyo would never have been made an issue if North Korea didn’t pose an existential threat in the first place.

Time and again, whether it is the THAAD deployment or joint US-South Korean military drills or intelligence-sharing with Japan, South Korea’s progressives have consistently voiced their opposition claiming that they would make matters worse while only perfunctorily stating that North Korea should not escalate tensions.

But this should come as no surprise considering the kinds of rhetoric that have come from South Korea’s progressives in the past. Only a month ago when President Park gave a speech calling on North Koreans to abandon their country and defect (a speech that was far less controversial or memorable than Reagan’s “tear-down-this-wall” speech), Rep. Park Jie-won, the floor leader of the People’s Party, accused President Park of making “a declaration of war.” Not to be outdone, Ki Dong-min, a party spokesperson for the Minjoo Party said President Park seemed to have been “on the warpath.”

With rhetoric like this coming from South Korean progressives, who needs the KCNA?

Giving this woman a real run for her money
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The Left often bristles anytime conservatives refer to them as jongbuk - pro-North Korean sympathizers. However, as much eye-rolling as the conservatives have induced due to their overuse of red-baiting, which has pushed many to compare conservatives to the boy who cried wolf, the accusation is not entirely without merit.

The Choi Soon-sil scandal has rocked the Park Geun-hye administration and with every new reveal, this onion of a scandal is a gift that keeps on giving. The opposition is right to demand that President Park withdraw herself from the day-to-day operations of the government and the protesters are more right still to demand her immediate resignation. However, opposing the Security of Military Information Agreement (GSOMIA) has exposed the opposition for what they always have been - craven reactionaries who seek nothing but their own political goals.

The opposition party has been enjoying growing support in the polls recently as a direct result of the Choi Soon-sil scandal but in their hubris, they seem to think that they can just about do anything. They ought to remember that though ousting the president may be justified, working against the country’s interests is unforgivable.

The progressives will be the new stewards of the country and they had better grow up and do it quickly because the world is changing as we speak.

It is likely that the next South Korean president is going to come from the Minjoo Party and as long as they can maintain their alliance with the other minor parties, it will become the next ruling and majority party. But it is important to bear in mind that the Minjoo Party has long committed itself to opposing the deployment of THAAD missile batteries and that it has a long and sordid history of anti-Americanism. So it’s more than plausible that South Korea’s policy toward North Korea might take a sharp left turn.

That sharp left-turn could mean that the future South Korean government might become more anti-Japanese (not that the conservatives were any help whatsoever in trying to improve ties with Tokyo), less pro-American, and more sympathetic to Pyongyang. After all, although it is unclear if Mayor Park Won-soon might become the next president, his incredibly naive positions such as revamping the Sunshine Policy and building “economic and cultural cooperation with the North” (I wonder what the mayor of Dandong might have to say about that!) are shared widely on the Left.

Good luck with that
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Newton’s Third Law of Motion states that for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. But that’s in the realm of physics. In the realm of politics, however, the reaction is not always equal. And it is quite hard to come up with a better example of that than Donald Trump’s electoral win. The incoming Trump administration could bring immense changes and it is now time for South Korea’s progressives to quickly learn to assess the new political reality.

That is because should South Korean progressives be tempted to return to their old ways and exploit anti-American sentiments again for any reason whatsoever, Trump’s likely braggadocious response would be less genteel than President George W. Bush’s response was while he was in the White House. Overt acts of anti-Americanism aside, one of the things that Trump ran on was for American allies to become more active in their own self-defense and to increase their share of joint-military budgets with the United States. It’s obvious how further South Korean attempts to maintain the status quo or push away Japan, which weakens the trilateral alliance (and we know what Trump thinks about perceptions of weakness), would be perceived in Washington.

It would not be an exaggeration to say that Trump has shown little love for South Korea during the campaign trail. He suggested that South Korea ought to pay 100 percent of the cost of stationing American troops and military hardware in the country. He has also called the South Korea-U.S. Free Trade Agreement a “job-killing deal” that has resulted in trade deficits for the US and his campaign went on record saying that he wants to go back to “ground zero” with regard to the trade deal.

It is true that Trump has repeatedly shown himself to be greatly ignorant of international politics when he expressed a blasé attitude about the possibility of a North Korean attack against South Korea or Japan, America’s staunchest allies in Asia, saying “it would be a terrible thing but if they do, they do.”

However, it would be a mistake to assume that Trump’s ignorance automatically means that the incoming administration will be incompetent. Trump already said months ago that should he win the election, he would consider appointing John Bolton, who should not need any introduction (or his views for that matter) in South Korea, as his Secretary of State. If South Korea’s progressives are not feeling even a little wary about the possible return of this real-life version of Yosemite Sam, then they’re going to be in for a rude awakening.

He’s baaaaack!
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In order to thrive in the Age of Trump, South Korea is going to have to rethink the way it conducts its foreign policy. It’s going to have to bury hatchets and cooperate closely with Japan, which is also likely to be as nervous about Trump. Consequently, South Korea’s progressives are also going to have to stop and think for a moment about the possible risks and benefits of reestablishing engagement with North Korea. And they are also going to have to act more cautiously in their approach to the US as America’s support can no longer be taken for granted - no matter how much people may want to pretend otherwise. The calculus has fundamentally shifted.

In short, if (more likely when) South Korea’s progressives take over from the conservatives in the next election (or after President Park resigns amid the scandals that are engulfing her administration), they are going to have to grow up and do so quickly. The country’s survival may depend on it.

Trump's Economic Proposals and How They Might Backfire

When presidential candidates are campaigning for office, they will promise everything from free healthcare to free lawn care if that is what is needed to get the votes they need to win. So when they do get elected, many of them renege on a great number of their campaign pledges. Sometimes, it’s because they never had any serious intention to go through with their pledges. And sometimes, it’s because they just didn’t have enough political capital to do everything they wanted to do.

However, for reasons that experts will be studying for years to come, Donald Trump is not like most politicians. During the 18 months that he campaigned for the presidency, Trump said a great number of things, ridiculous things, that would have permanently tanked any other politician’s career. Who else remembers that back in 2004, Howard Dean’s aspirations for the presidency was destroyed all because of a scream? Simpler times, indeed.

One of his more ridiculous pledges was to enforce a complete and total shutdown of Muslims entering the United States. That pledge has been quietly withdrawn. A year ago, he also said that he would “absolutely” require Muslims to register in a federal database. When he was asked how that would be different from the way Jews had to register with the government in Nazi Germany, he repeatedly answered by saying “You tell me.” Thankfully, that, too, has been withdrawn.

If it quacks like a Nazi...
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Now it appears that Trump will have to backtrack from his most famous pledge - his pledge to build a “big, beautiful, powerful wall” on the US-Mexico border. Even Newt Gingrich, former Speaker of the House and ardent Trump supporter, admitted that Trump’s promise to get Mexico to to pay for the wall may have just been “a campaign device.”

It has only been a few days since Trump won the presidential election and he is already going back on some of his biggest promises such as punishing corrupt special interests or locking up Hillary Clinton. Many of his supporters are not likely to be happy about Trump’s flip-flopping. This will mean that even before he begins his presidency, he will likely lose a lot of good will from the many people who voted for him.

However, this is not a moment for anyone who opposed Trump to be allowing themselves to enjoy feelings of schadenfreude. That is because Trump will most likely resort to other methods to placate his supporters and the fact of the matter is that Trump is a deal-maker and he will make the kinds of deals that are profitable to him, but not necessarily anyone else.

So among the first things that Trump will do as president is to fulfill his pledge to rip up trade deals. The TPP will be the first casualty. It’s unclear if Trump would actually be able to abolish NAFTA as he said he would. After all, NAFTA has been in place for a long time and there will be many vested interests who would be severely opposed to such a move. On the other hand, the TPP, which is still in its embryonic stage, would be much easier to terminate. The rationale behind it would be to prevent a “job-killing” deal that might cause a trade deficit for the US.

To complement that decision, Trump will likely push to keep another promise, which he also knows will face little to no opposition from the newly elected Republican Congress - his promise to levy a one-time 10 percent tax on all repatriated corporate profits that are currently being held offshore. Added together with the Federal Reserve’s independent plan to gradually raise short-term interest rates in the near term future, there is a good chance that at least within the first few months of Trump’s presidency, the US might see a spike in capital inflows, which could have a large stimulative effect on the US economy.

I'm rich, bitch!
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Trump is hoping that the repatriated capital would be able to be used to generate US$1 trillion in private sector infrastructure investment over a decade to rebuild the country’s infrastructure. That way, he hopes to create thousands of jobs which would have a cumulative effect on the economy. However, repatriation of corporate profits is a temporary fix. Realistically, to raise the kind of capital needed to overhaul the nation’s infrastructure over the long term, Congress would also need to raise taxes such as the the federal gas tax and tying future increases to inflation. Needless to say, however, raising taxes is not popular and probably won’t be considered.

Unfortunately, the bad news doesn’t end there. The repatriation of corporate profits will come at the expense of other countries around the world and this could particularly hurt Europe. After all, as a result of a US$14 billion penalty from the US Justice department stemming back to the subprime mortgage crisis, Deutsche Bank, one of the largest banks in the world, almost faced a Lehman Brothers-like collapse a few short months ago. Deutsche Bank barely survived but the Eurozone debt crisis and negative interest rates continue to haunt it and other major European banks. A sudden loss of significant US Dollar reserves, which would likely follow such a generous corporate tax and a Federal Reserve interest rate hike, could very well hurl the entire European continent into yet another banking crisis.

Trump might receive less support (in fact, he might face fierce resistance) but another thing that he might attempt to do is fulfill his pledge to impose a 35 percent tariff on all imports coming from Mexico. What is much less certain, however, is his pledge to impose a 45 percent tariff on all imports coming from China. In fact, as unlikely as the former may be, the latter is even more unlikely. An imposition of even minor tariffs can and do lead to economic retaliations, which if left unchecked, could spiral into a vicious trade war. And a trade war could be devastating. It is likely that those sums that Trump suggested were yet another example of “campaign devices.”

So far, that would mean that Trump would have killed a trade deal that was never born in the first place and force corporations to repatriate their profits back to American banks. The first suffers from a bad case of “the seen and the unseen” and the second would be easy for the Democrats and other progressives to ridicule as yet another example of trickle-down economics. In other words, they’re both weak sauce. Trump would need to deliver something much bigger to appease the voters and Congress.

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So if Trump can’t punish China and Mexico, there are other countries that Trump can punish to show his loyalists that he is “doing something” for them without having to face too severe a backlash. The easiest target will likely be South Korea.

Politically, South Korea would be easy to throw under the bus. Unlike China, it doesn’t have a billion-strong population and it is not the second largest economy in the world. And unlike Mexico, South Korea doesn’t share a long border with the United States that has allowed for centuries of trade, easy immigration (legal and illegal), and cultural exchanges. Furthermore, South Korea is an American ally in an unfriendly far-away neighborhood, which means that South Korea has little choice but to be more cautious (read, timid) in its dealings with the US.

For a deal maker like Trump, South Korea is the perfect negotiation partner - one that he can kick around and squeeze for as much concessions as possible. Trump will twist arms and deploy brinkmanship-esque negotiation tactics with regards to military cost-sharing plans and renegotiating the ROK-US Free Trade Agreement.

Threatening South Korea by stating that he would be willing to walk away from the alliance would certainly be an effective strategy. It would certainly cause initial resentment among South Koreans, but it probably will not change the fundamentals of the partnership. As a result, unless South Korea balks (which is highly unlikely) the alliance will not break.

Whether or not the free trade deal gets renegotiated to Trump’s satisfaction, the renegotiation alone would take years. In the meantime, Trump would be able to tell the voters that he is looking out for their best interests by squeezing more money out from “ungrateful and free-riding allies.”

Trump's preferred means of negotiations
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However, Trump might not have much room to put too many other Asian countries in a vice grip. That is because now that the TPP is dead, China is wasting no time to push ahead with their version of the TPP - the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP). Just as the TPP excluded China and Russia (something Trump didn’t know about until it was pointed out to him by Rand Paul) as a way for Washington to set trade rules for the fast-growing Pacific-rim region before Beijing does, the RCEP will exclude the US for the very same reason.

So although Trump might still do away with the TPP, he cannot completely abandon trade deals with Asia.

For its part, as a result of the previously mentioned closer relationship between the US and Russia and a continued (if somewhat sputtering) Asia Pivot, China might think it necessary to continue to accelerate its military modernization program, which would further cause nervousness among China’s smaller neighbors or even compel them to shift allegiance to Beijing.

So if Trump cannot afford to squeeze East Asia too hard, there are two other related areas that he could exploit. The first is to rescind Obama’s policy and allow TransCanada Corp. to re-submit its application for the proposed Keystone XL oil pipeline in return for a larger percentage of profits generated. Furthermore, he could put the Environmental Protection Agency on a much shorter leash (as it had been under the George W. Bush administration) in order to encourage more U.S. energy exports.

Naturally, however, this would lead to a larger glut of supplies, which in turn would lower oil prices and help the US grow its oil market share. Although some individual oil companies will certainly suffer as a result of sustained low prices, in the larger scheme of things, this could nominally help the US. However, not everyone would be celebrating this turn of events. OPEC members and other natural-resources based economies in Africa and Southeast Asia would not be happy.

Even wealthy countries like Saudi Arabia are struggling as a result of low oil prices and facing ever dwindling foreign-exchange reserves. Things have become more desperate among poorer OPEC member states such as Russia and Venezuela (and other smaller Gulf kingdoms, albeit to a lesser extent). Combined with an ongoing Sunni-Shiite proxy war and continued conflict in Syria, it is highly unlikely that anyone in the Middle East is celebrating Trump’s victory.

Speaking of Syria, one thing that Trump would certainly do to great fanfare is to withdraw US forces from that country. Trump is a deal maker and truth be told, for the US, the Syrian conflict is a moral one. And for a deal maker like Trump, intangibles such as morals or loyalty don’t carry any weight. Regardless of how that conflict turns out, the US would not see direct profits from it. However, due to the aforementioned Sunni-Shiite proxy war, that does not mean that a US withdrawal would help to usher in peace in the Middle East.

It should be noted, however, that withdrawal from Syria would not mean that Trump would push for a general withdrawal from the Middle East region altogether. Trump has always projected himself as a strong leader to the point of thuggery. A single terrorist attack would likely compel Trump to retaliate disproportionately, which could very well keep the vicious cycle of US involvement in the Middle East ongoing.

There is, however, one bright side - if it can be called that. An unintended consequence of growing unease in the Middle East as a result of continued drop in oil prices would likely be that Middle Eastern governments are going to seek assurances that they will not be toppled by their own people. The Arab Spring still remains fresh in Middle Easterners’ collective memory as many are still living through its consequences. In order to ensure regime survival from their own people and each other, Middle Eastern governments could very well increase their arms procurement, thus helping America’s arms industry to make even more money than before.

(Although the TPP may be dead, Trump’s policy advisers have said that the military aspect of the Asia Pivot will still continue and that Trump would do so by enlarging the US Navy. This will also help to raise jobs and help the arms industry be more profitable. In the long-term, however, increased defense spending is unlikely to help the US economy.)

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Thankfully, however, as a result of Trump’s narrow focus on only making deals that are profitable, there is little chance that there will be a war between the US and North Korea. There is no reason to attack North Korea because there is no way that doing so would profit Trump or the US. In fact, it is entirely possible that Trump might wish to pursue engagement with North Korea because he might want to exploit North Korean natural resources. Whether such an endeavor would be fruitful, however, is another matter entirely.

Besides, another reason why there most likely will not be a war with North Korea is that to date, no nation state armed with nuclear weapons has ever been attacked.

The future does not look too bright for Donald Trump. If he pushes through the aforementioned pledges, they will certainly benefit the US. At least in the short run as the country will be awash in capital that will provide an economic stimulus but without the Broken Window effect. However, the negative effects that they would have on developing economies in Asia, Africa, and even in Europe could lead to a prolonged worldwide economic recession. This would have a domino effect and the US would not be spared.

Unless Trump pursues better policies that would help to promote free trade and cooperative partnerships with other countries around the world, there is a very good chance that Trump would end up being a one-term president.

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Trump Did Not Reverse Himself on Korea

It is being widely reported in news outlets around the world that President-Elect Trump seems to have reversed himself on various topics.

One of the things that Trump seems to be backing away from is his pledge to go through with “a complete and total shutdown of Muslims entering the United States.” The Independent reported that the pledge was quietly removed from Trump’s campaign website.

Another pledge that Trump is being reported to backtrack from is the campaign rhetoric he employed against South Korea. When President Park Geun-hye called Trump to congratulate him on his electoral victory, Trump reportedly assured Park of his commitment to the alliance - promising to maintain the existing security alliance and stating that the US would work with South Korea “until the end.”

The end, indeed.
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However, it would be a mistake for South Korean leaders to take this to mean that Trump is comfortable with maintaining the status quo.

For one thing, Trump is infamous for flip-flopping far more often than, well, flip flops. He has often denied that he had even said anything contrary to what he is saying now even if he had said it only moments ago and that it had all been caught on tape. He may be feeling magnanimous now. After all, he’s just been elected to the most powerful office in the world. The man is allowed to feel elated. But who is to say how he may feel in the next few days or weeks? For good or for ill, euphoria is ephemeral.

Throughout the campaign, Trump has acted like a 70-year-old man-child and there is little to no evidence that he will ever change regardless of his claim that he’s “gonna be so presidential that you people will be so bored.”

More importantly, however, Trump never once said that he was going to abandon the ROK-US alliance. That was not what he said. What he said was that he was “absolutely prepared” to tell every American ally, South Korea included, that they would be defending themselves unless they agreed to shoulder more of the cost of an American troop presence in their countries. After all, he thinks that the approximately US$900 million that South Korea pays for the stationing of American troops on Korean soil is “peanuts.”

Although he assured Park that he is committed to the alliance, at no point in that phone conversation did anyone mention the words military bases, cost sharing, renegotiation, or troop withdrawal. In other words, there is plenty of room for the Trump administration to seek to renegotiate (via severe arm twisting) to push through with his campaign pledge.

And there is a good chance that this is one of those pledges that he will see through. He may have flip-flopped on many things, but “free-riding allies” is a concept that he had been repeating for years.

The Farkus School of Diplomacy
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As for the comment that Trump made about South Korea possibly acquiring nuclear weapons, there are two things to consider. The first is what he said.

“At some point we have to say, you know what, we're better off if Japan protects itself against this maniac in North Korea. We're better off, frankly, if South Korea is going to start to protect itself. It (nuclear armament among US allies) is going to happen anyway. It's going to happen anyway. It's only a question of time. They're going to start having them or we have to get rid of them entirely.”

The important words here are “at some point,” “if,” and “we (the US) have to get rid of them (nuclear weapons) entirely.”

That leaves a lot of room for interpretation.

The second thing to consider is the last thing he said - that the US would have to get rid of nuclear weapons entirely. Simply put, that is wishful fantasy. Any South Korean who is jumping for joy at the prospect of South Korea being given the green light to acquire nuclear weapons might want to hold off the celebrations because, frankly, it is not going to happen. At least not anytime soon.

There are many possible reasons why Trump didn’t get into any of those details. The most obvious reasons are that the phone call was just one of many similar phone calls that he was having with leaders from all around the world who are all congratulating him on his electoral victory. There probably was not much time to get into details. Also, it was the first call that he was having with the other world leaders as the President Elect. Maybe it’s possible that there is a part of him that thinks that being tactful and diplomatic is important.

Or maybe it is because he is feeling magnanimous and saying nice things because other world leaders are saying nice things to him and that was all that he ever wanted. Or maybe he is just letting other world leaders let their guard down before he yanks everything from underneath them. Who knows?

Things can change dramatically in the coming days and weeks. This is a unique time when the sitting president and the incoming president have an opportunity to play good-cop-bad-cop with other world leaders (or their own wayward people) to get as much concessions as possible. And seeing how Obama has been the “good cop” (highly debatable) to America's allies during his tenure, Trump can be the “bad cop” and play the role with relish.

It is true that Trump is not the president until the moment he is sworn into office on January 20th. Until the moment he assumes office, he has no official political power. But he does have the ability to bluff, suggest, cajole, and threaten other world leaders. After all, Obama is on the way out and as the Obama administration is relegated to the history books, the rest of the world is going to have to learn to live with the Trump administration.

It is important for South Korean leaders to keep their guard up. Imagining that the Trump administration will keep the alliance and trade partnership unchanged would be a grave mistake.

Everything is supposedly deadly calm in the eye of the storm...
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A Trump Presidency and What It Might Mean for Korea

“May you live in interesting times.”

And what an interesting year 2016 has been. A number of beloved celebrities have died, Brangelina has split up, the Chicago Cubs won the World Series, and Donald J. Trump, the tweeting orange who’d date his own daughter if she weren’t his daughter, seems set to be the next president of the United States.

Many journalists, pundits, writers, bloggers, thinkers, philosophers, and anyone with an opinion is going to talk about this election for years. What everyone did wrong, where they went right, what caused what, how things will turn out, etc.

Old political alliances that died eight years ago are going to reemerge. Progressives who argued that President Obama needed more power to do the things he wanted to do and who lauded his use of executive orders are now going to side with libertarians in arguing for a weaker executive.

(Welcome back, progressives. How’ve you been?)

But not all old alliances will be rediscovered. Conservatives and Neo-conservatives might not rekindle their old relationship. But then again, knowing how many times Trump has changed his positions on any given topic within a matter of minutes, I suppose it would be foolish to write off anything.

But what does a Trump presidency mean for inter-Korean relations? What would it mean for the ROK-US alliance? What about the KOR-US Free Trade Agreement?

In short, all bets are off.

Trump has long said that he would put all options on the table in regards to negotiating with “free-riding” allies. Never mind that Korea is not a free-riding ally. But inherent in that position is the willingness to withdraw American troops from the Korean Peninsula unless South Korea pays more for the alliance’s costs.

(I do believe he once asked why South Korea wasn’t paying 100 percent of the costs during one of his stump speeches.)

Let’s assume that, unlike Jimmy Carter, he will refuse to bend to foreign policy and military experts and simply do as he wishes. If that happens, it is likely that the US might seek to quickly transfer wartime control of the South Korean military to Seoul as soon as possible. As worrisome as that might be considering the fact that South Korea might have been controlled by a shadowy cult over the past few years, what’s even more worrisome is that this may give the pro-nuclear armament voices in South Korea the boost that they have been seeking, which could lead to all sorts of gargantuan problems.

Would an American withdrawal from Korea, and possibly Japan, mean that Seoul and Tokyo might have the incentive to finally push aside old fights and seek a closer partnership with one another to seek a common defense against North Korea? Or would it remove the one common denominator that had nominally united Seoul and Tokyo in a fractured trilateral alliance?

Park Geun-hye is now a lame duck president and it appears that the next South Korean president might come from the Minjoo Party, which has a history of strong anti-American elements. Combine that with a Trump presidency that eschews foreign policy and what would that do to inter-Korean relations?

Trump has gone on record and said that China ought to do more to contain the North Korean threat. But China has never cared to put North Korea in its place. And assuming that Trump withdraws American troops from Korea and/or transfers wartime control to Seoul, how would China’s perception of the Korean Peninsula change?

Furthermore, Trump has also suggested that China ought to invade North Korea. As unlikely as it is for China to take up on that offer, regardless of which political party governs South Korea now and in the future, that is yet something else that will likely fray the ROK-US alliance.

Would an emboldened North Korea continue to pursue further nuclear armament? Will sanctions continue to be enforced against North Korea or will they be put in the backseat, thus destroying any progress (limited as they have been) that have been made over the past eight to ten years?

As mentioned earlier, the next South Korean president might come from the Minjoo Party. Would the Minjoo Party reintroduce the Sunshine Policy, thus killing sanctions programs before they have a real chance to succeed? What about the deployment of THAAD missile batteries? Will that be canceled?

How would the free trade agreement that was signed between Korea and the US change? Trump has been vague about this. Will it be scrapped? If so, how would that affect the Korean economy? The Korean economy has been experiencing slumping exports and rising household debt. A looming interest rate hike by the US Federal Reserve has been seriously threatening Korea’s economic growth. Any possible renegotiation or hint of scrapping the free trade deal could send the Korean economy plummeting.

I have to point out that the election is not yet over. Nothing is ever over until the fat lady sings. But pundits are saying the word “unlikely” with growing frequency in regards to a Clinton victory.

We have to remember that politicians have a tendency to renege on many of their campaign pledges once having won an election. So whether or not Trump follows through with his pledges is up in the air. Maybe he will. Or maybe he’ll plate the White House in gold and play golf in Scotland with Duterte and Putin while Mike Pence and Paul Ryan do the real work of governing the US.

Regardless of how things turn out, the next four years are going to be incredibly interesting.

For now, however, the whole world might have to get used to saying “President Donald J. Trump.”

God help us all.

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Park Geun-hye the Pitiful

President Park apologized a second time today for the still unraveling Choi Soon-sil scandal. It was a slightly more contrite apology than the first one she gave. In an emotional speech, she expressed remorse and, at times her voice becoming shaky, she accepted responsibility for the scandal, while also opening herself to the possibility of being investigated by prosecutors. If she does get investigated by prosecutors, she would become the first sitting president to do so.

But the truly saddest part of the apology was when she denied that she had participated in shamanistic rituals in the Blue House. Televsions show script writers could not have come up with something as bitterly tragicomic.

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There are many things about this second apology that people can pick apart. For those who never liked President Park from the beginning, there is nothing that she could ever do that would ever get them to change their minds. Even though she accepted the possibility of being investigated by prosecutors “if necessary,” there are people suggesting that the fact that she didn’t say anything about her unilateral decision to appoint a new prime minister means that she has no plans to loosen her grip on power.

Such is the result of hyper-partisanism.

Her apology offered nothing new. But what caught my attention was when she said that she lived a “lonely life” in the Blue House and that was why she sought friendship and guidance from Choi Soon-sil.

It seemed a cry for sympathy. Those few words brought back memories of her assassinated parents as well as her estrangement from her siblings. In effect, it was a reminder that she is an Orphan of the Nation.

To be clear, I do not think that portion of the speech was meant for those who never liked her from the start. As mentioned earlier, she cannot say or do anything to make them change their minds. No, that was meant for those who had supported her but have since turned their backs on her. The most recent polls reveal that her approval ratings has dropped to 5%, making her the least popular sitting president in the history of the country. She is bleeding political capital, or what little she had left of it, and she is likely doing whatever she can to stop it.

It’s possible that the tactic might work. After all, only cynics have their hearts absolutely closed to pity. However, there is a type of person who is more cynical than that and that is the type of person who would use another person’s pity for him or her as a weapon. Deliberately or not, by invoking pity, President Park is asking the people to have the heart to overlook reality.

But what is the reality of the situation? That is what people are trying to find out. What was President Park doing the whole time while Choi Soon-sil was running a shadow government? Was she aware of what was going on? Did she allow it despite knowing what was going on? If so, she is an accomplice. Or was she unaware of what was going on and truly thought that Choi was sincerely only looking out for her interests? If so, then she is incompetent.

Either way, justice must be served. But if justice is denied because people are overcome by a great swell of pity, then the guilty would be shown mercy. And if the guilty do not pay, the innocent have to pay it. This would be a moral and intellectual abdication because compassion is proper only toward those who are innocent victims, not toward those who are morally guilty. Everyone must be judged with the same respect for truth and must be judged for what they have done and treated accordingly.

Virtuous deeds must be praised and malfeasance must be condemned. Failure to do so can only mean that the virtuous must necessarily be betrayed and the wicked encouraged.

Had President Park any sense of dignity, she would have apologized, accepted responsibility, agreed to being investigated by a special prosecutor, and agreed to resign if necessary. There are important tasks that must be undertaken - with or without her. Had she taken that route, she would have at least been able to salvage a semblance of self-respect. Instead, she chose to appear the pitiful victim - an irredeemable person with no shred of respect.

It truly was painful to watch.

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President Park Geun-hye Should Resign

The more details about the Choi Soon-sil scandal are revealed, the more bizarre the story seems to get. From stories of shamanistic priests to corporate malfeasance to unlawfully accessing classified information to prosecutorial ineptitude to familial favoritism to allegations about sacrificial rituals during the Sewol ferry disaster to questions about whether Choi had used the Blue House as a sleepover camp, one can’t help but be reminded of Mark Twain’s quote about how the truth is often stranger than fiction.

Like The Korean said in his blog post, the scandal has put the entire corporate-government symbiotic relationship into the Tyson Zone where every allegation and rumor, no matter how insane, now seems entirely plausible.

It is important to point out that there has yet to be a trial, much less a conviction. Until that takes place, every allegation is just that - an allegation. However, there is absolutely no doubt that as a direct result of this scandal and the eye roll-inducing manner in which she has attempted to contain it, it would be a gross understatement to claim that President Park is now a lame duck president.

In fact, this goes well beyond a lame duck presidency. Due to the far-reaching influence that Choi Soon-sil seems to have had over the president, government ministries, and various corporations, it may be safe to say that the Park administration has fundamentally collapsed.

I doubt this is what James & Bobby Purify had in mind
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(As of this writing, Kim Byong-joon, whom President Park has nominated to become the next prime minister, is currently giving a press conference stating that President Park has agreed that, upon confirmation to his post, Kim would take over all domestic affairs while President Park will only oversee foreign policy. He has also said that it may be possible for prosecutors to investigate President Park, albeit “prudently.” However, it is still unclear if the opposition parties will agree to President Park’s unilateral appointment.)

Considering the fact that South Korea currently faces wave after wave of economic and security challenges, this scandal could not have come at a worse time.

Samsung Electronics, which had to cancel its Galaxy Note 7, is currently on shaky ground, which in turn has led to increased calls for the government to push through corporate reform. Korea’s largest container shipping company, Hanjin, went into receivership a few months ago and the company still has stranded crew members out at sea who are running out of rations. Falling exports, rising household debt, and a looming interest rate hike by the US Federal Reserve could seriously threaten economic growth. The government still needs to curb the chaebols’ excesses, push for more deregulation and a more flexible labor market, and help to boost startup businesses. More urgently, the National Assembly still needs to approve the government’s ₩400.7 trillion budget for next year.

On the security side of things, sensing an opportunity, China is once again looking for ways to force South Korea to abandon its plans to deploy THAAD missile batteries. North Korea still poses an existential threat to South Korea. In order to properly combat the North Korean menace, South Korea needs to pursue careful diplomacy, strong sanctions, and meticulous alliance management. Although the Obama administration has said that the ROK-US alliance is still “strong and durable,” there is no doubt concern about South Korea’s current state of political paralysis. Furthermore, US officials are all too aware that support for the alliance and/or the US’ interests are not unanimous in South Korea.

The duties and responsibilities that weigh on the president’s shoulders require Herculean leadership. It is needed even during the best of times and it is absolutely paramount during times of trouble. But the Choi Soon-sil scandal has derailed everything.

As it is now apparent that President Park can no longer lead the country or regain the trust of those whom she is supposed to govern, it is now abundantly clear that she ought to resign.

The fact that the majority of Saenuri and Minjoo lawmakers have thus far refused to call for her resignation shows that even now they are placing their own interests above that of the country’s. They have refused to do so because if President Park resigns immediately, as per the Republic of Korea Constitution, a new election has to take place in sixty days whereby a new president would be able to begin a new five-year term.

Seeing how the scandal has not only tarnished President Park’s reputation but also that of the Saenuri Party itself, it is clear why Saenuri lawmakers would be opposed to a sudden resignation. They would have the most to lose. Furthermore, the Saenuri Party’s most likely nominee, Ban Ki-moon, would be ineligible to run as he is still serving as the UN’s Secretary General.

(Assuming that Ban Ki-moon still plans to run for president and he doesn’t choose to be another party’s standard bearer, he may need to rename the Saenuri Party, again, and purge the party off Park Geun-hye’s most loyal supporters.)

The same goes for the Minjoo Party. Prior to the Choi Soon-sil scandal, it appeared that it was the Minjoo Party that would be engulfed in flames when former Foreign Minister Song Min-soon mentioned in his memoir, A Glacier Inevitably Moves, that Moon Jae-in had given the green light in 2007 to ask Pyongyang for its opinion on the UN resolution on North Korean human rights violations, a charge that Moon has yet to deny.

(Personally, I think this ought to disqualify Moon Jae-in from being elected dog catcher, much less president.)

The Minjoo Party may be enjoying higher approval ratings than the Saenuri Party, but that’s not saying very much. Should the presidential election take place today, there is no guarantee that Moon would be elected president. Until recently, Moon was operating under the assumption that he would have more than a year to campaign for the presidency. It is likely that he would rather not deviate from the plan.

The two major political figures who are openly calling for President Park’s resignation, Ahn Cheol-soo and Park Won-soon, were facing steep uphill battles of their own against Moon Jae-in to become the progressives’ nominee for president. But if President Park resigns, seeing how Moon is facing his own political scandal, they would have a much better chance of sealing the nomination for themselves. Although they are both right to demand President Park’s immediate resignation, their naked ambition and lust for power are not very subtle.

The show must go on!
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Readers of this blog already know my biases. Although President Park has shown herself to be an unremarkable, underwhelming, and disappointing leader in more ways than one, I have felt nothing but unadulterated admiration for her hawkish policy toward North Korea and her dogged pursuance of free trade deals with as many countries and trading blocs as possible. Conversely, I find many of South Korea’s progressives’ willingness to appease Pyongyang and their slavish devotion to unions and (even more than conservatives’) nativist outlook on trade despicable.

Should President Park resign immediately, there is a very good chance that I would find the next president’s views on trade, tax policy, welfare reform, labor reform, economic regulation, and foreign policy deplorable and downright dangerous for the country’s future. But the fact remains that through no one else’s fault other than her own, President Park has lost the trust of the people and turned her administration into an international laughing stock. You know you’re a joke when North Korea pokes fun at you. Irony truly is dead and President Park’s fingerprints are all over the murder weapon.

South Korea survived ten years of Kim Dae-jung and Roh Moo-hyun. It survived Lee Myung-bak and it has thus far survived Park Geun-hye and it will survive the next fifteen months should she choose not to step down. South Korea will also survive the next president whoever he or she may be.

But whether or not South Korea will be able to survive the long-term consequences of her refusal to step down is less clear.

If President Park refuses to step down, she will also bring the Saenuri Party down with her. For all of its faults, and they are legion, a Saenuri collapse could lead effectively to a one-party state and God knows that far too many progressive politicians appear to live in a world that is very remote from reality - full of fantasy and whimsy. Despite its many flaws, for a healthy and vibrant republic to exist, there has to be at least two opposing political parties.

For the sake of the country’s future, President Park should resign.

Go. Definitely go.
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