Hello and welcome to World Today.
I'm Zhao Yang. South Korea has elected a new leader after six months of political turmoil.
New president Lee Jae -myung began his term on Wednesday.
He pledged to raze the country from what is described as the near -destruction caused by a martial law crisis and revive an economy facing global protectionism.
It is time to rebuild national security and peace, which have become tools of political strife, people's livelihoods and the economy, which have collapsed due to indifference, incompetence and irresponsibility.
Lee also emphasized a pragmatic and national -interest -centered approach in diplomacy.
We will strengthen the U .S.-Korea alliance, bolster Korea -U .S.-Japan cooperation based on it, and manage relations with neighboring countries from a practical, national -interest perspective.
How will President Lee unite a divided country and revive a slumping economy?
And could we see a reorientation in South Korea's foreign policy?
For these questions and more, we are joined by Rongying, chair professor with the school of international studies at Sichuan University.
Joseph Gregory Mahoney, professor of politics and international relations at East China Normal University.
Einar Tangyun, senior fellow at Taihe Institute and chairman of Asian Narratives Substack.
Gentlemen, welcome to you all.
Glad to be here. Thank you.
Thank you for having us.
Professor Rong, let me start with you because we know that Lee Jae -myeon won nearly 50 % of the vote in an election with the highest turnout since 1997.
So what do you see as the key factors behind this decisive victory?
I think for President Lee and his party the Democratic Party was a huge a sort of victory, a landslide victory for South Korea.
It was also, I think, it really signified the end of political chaos, social division and so on and so forth.
There are certainly, I think, many factors constituting this result.
But of course, we all know that the immediate one was the short -lived sort of law by former President Jong and his impeachment and the immediate sort of chaos and turbulence as a result of that for the past six months.
So I would say if we look at the high sort of voting rate, this indeed is sort of signifies a very strong sense of sort of frustration about the political chaos is arriving from by the ruling, I mean the former ruling party, the former president, and also the kind of expectation or anticipation that the new leader, leadership would bring about something new and changes so that they would not only end the chaos, political chaos, social sort of divisions and also economic, I mean difficulties, but hopefully I think begin a new era, which is of course a big question mark taking into account the challenges
that are facing President Li.
So all in all, we are, I think the result, to some extent that's being largely anticipated.
But that does not mean.
I think the the end of the problems and the divisions and polarizations that was largely primarily constitutes the chaos and the problems, I think, in the past six months and we defined the way ahead.
Yeah, we'll discuss that in a short while.
but Einar, Lee actually framed this election as a judgement day against the imposition of the martial law.
So to what extent do you feel like this was a vote for Lee himself and how much of it was like a rejection of Yong Suo You and the martial law crisis?
Well that's the thing.
I mean, democracies are very good at rejecting governments.
Picking the right one is up to the parties.
And what you have here is a left leaning politician who has had a lot of controversies.
He has personally five suits against him, all about corruption, and then you have the domestic issues that were covered by a professor.
And then the international issues of course, with the United States and exactly what that means.
And so this was not a vote of confidence necessarily in his agenda.
It was really about rejecting a power play by a conservative entity individual who had lost the faith of the people and decided that he was going to move towards an autocratic stance.
So, Professor Mahoney, what do you think?
I mean, apart from the rejection to Ying Sun -Yong, does Li's personal story, like his background as a former human rights lawyer and maybe his rights from working in a sweatshop to political leader.
Do you think that kind of also resonates with the voters, especially the young and working class?
You know I think it's, I think it's fairly complicated.
I agree with Einar and Rong Ying in broad strokes, and certainly I think it's, it's actually disappointing to see that he didn't eclipse the 50 % point in this election, given the positive headwinds he had with with his predecessors, tragic political mistake.
On the one hand, I think he's a he's a complicated character as you as you noted, he's, he's he worked as a as a child laborer.
He didn't go to middle school or high school because his father gambled away the family money according to the to various reports.
He was injured as a child worker was disabled, and therefore excused from from military compulsory military service.
He started climbing his way up through middle school as an older person and then on to high school and then got good grades and went to university, studied law, and committed himself to what appears to have been the noble pursuits of human rights and workers' rights, these sorts of things.
And then carried this over into politics.
And this is where things I think inevitably become a little complicated, because you know, there's there's this general understanding that once hands always get dirty in politics, and, and I think, you know, just to point to an old paradigm in the Chinese tradition, in the dynastic tradition, you know, the idea was that the emperor was supposed to cultivate himself as the, as the ideal Confucian gentleman, and whenever his government had been too sullied by the inevitable dirt that attaches itself to the the dirty business of politics, that it was his job to bring that person down, and to bring
a new political system in South Korea.
There are some really entrenched social and political and economic problems, some of which stretch all the way back to the Korean War and how that was resolved, and the economic structures that came out of that, the political structures that came out of that, the security arrangement that came out of that with United States.
And it's, it's been the case that one, no matter how left leaning or left of center one is, one inevitably has to do business with these elements that are deeply connected to a military industrial complex, a security complex appeasing the United States, making sure that you don't alienate these large Chable or these large, massive companies like Samsung or Hyundai or others that have been shown through time to play a very powerful role, not only in the economy, but in politics.
So you know, I think what happened was, his reputation was was somewhat solid as he went further and further into politics.
And And certainly, South Korea was experiencing this increased political polarization, very much like what we see in the United States and this tit -for -tat, back and forth, from one administration to the next, each trying to damage the other's brand and to attach scandals to their primary potential candidates for the future.
So these were all concerns.
But likewise, you know, Yoon, his predecessor, won power, in part by creating this strange coalition between young men who were feeling disaffected by progressive women their age, and older people who were unhappy with the progressive policies that had been advanced by the Moon administration, the middle -aged progressives.
So there's this weird coalition previously of middle -aged and young women and voting together versus elderly and young men.
And so these are these deep sort of strange gender and generational problems at work also in South Korea.
And I think that they were still, we still see that having an impact in terms of the votes that the conservatives received despite the martial law attempt by Jung.
Yeah. And Professor Rong, just now, you also mentioned the deep divisions within the country, but we know that Lee Jaimyeon actually campaigned as a unifier.
So does his landslide victory, Do we truly give him a strong mandate, or is his presidency still vulnerable, given the political polarization?
I think we, the panel at least, I think all agree that the election, the victory of President Lee does not mean that the end of the division or the polarization, which across many layers.
That's why I think President Lee himself knows very well, and as a political gesture, I think in his inaugural address announced that he is going to be a president for all.
I think the fact that he wins quite a lot, even though not as much as the simple majority, and also that his party, the Democratic Party of South Korea, has controlled the National Assembly.
That is a quite a strong sort of mandate.
That is something, I think, quite strong shown, v dah v compared to his predecessor, the former President Yang.
But that, I think, arguably does not add or help to relieve his vulnerabilities.
Why in terms of the cases?
I mean, there are five cases, criminal cases, I mean, against him, even though I think constitutionally or that being the president, he will be exempted from that.
And the other thing is, of course, because it's kind of sense of sort of unsafety or vulnerabilities of opposition parties that what he will be using that mandate to achieve political, economic and others.
So there are of course some testing sort of, there are some cases or there are some indicators of the opposition parties.
All those in the opposition would like to see.
Last but not least, I think if you look at the, those who support the opposition parties or the conservative parties, they're still quite strong.
And so I think it would be a very difficult job for him, even though he wanted to go across the lines.
And even though I think politically, he clearly knows the sort of importance of, I mean, unify, I mean, South Korea as a society as a whole.
Yeah, so Einar, how realistic do you believe is Lee's pledge of national unity, given the sharp divisions along ideological, generational and gender lines?
And also do you think those legal cases against Lee is gonna affect his leadership?
Oh yeah, let's answer that in reverse order.
I mean, obviously, the five cases, So without those five cases, you have easily gotten above 50 percent.
And that's just my projection.
I used to run elections in the United States.
I know how voters tend to look at things.
And this was kind of a besmirch mark against him.
They're real questions.
Remember, this is a country, over 30 years, only three presidents haven't gone to prison.
And it's pretty certain that the former one is going to go, so that record is going to remain intact.
So, when you start talking about unifying the country, they're involved in a culture war, much the way the United States is, much the way throughout the world, major economies, even emerging ones, are having great difficulty.
The idea that you can vote a government out, doesn't mean that the new government has a plan.
The tendency is just to say the other guys, as Professor Mahony said, they're bad and and they have scandals, you should let me take a try.
Well, the fact is, they had, they were bad.
They had scandals. So, you're just, you're making a choice between the impossible.
That's kind of like with Harris and Trump.
People, they didn't think that Trump was a great guy.
He just thought or hoping that he would be somebody who could address the economic tin year that Biden had, where he kept on saying, oh, everything's great.
Whereas, you know, the majority, the majority of the working poor and lower middle classes were not thinking it was great, they were having great difficulty and no one was paying attention to it.
So as I started out, you know, democracies are great at getting rid of countries, but it does, I mean, getting rid of governments.
But it doesn't mean the new government comes in and has a cohesive plan.
Now, turning our attention to the new president of South Korea, he's indicated that he's going be very pragmatic that he's going to do exactly as my colleagues have said, he's going to try to go in between all of these pressure points, the troubles, interest, labor, et cetera, and try to concentrate on the working man.
Now, in theory, that should be wonderful, but it's never that simple.
Once you start getting into how you change things, it always comes down to if you want to spend, you need to tax.
If you don't want to tax, you have to borrow.
South Korea already has substantial borrowing.
And it becomes very difficult, especially for the conservatives, to say, oh yes, we'll just keep borrowing ourselves into some sort of prosperity.
It hasn't happened yet.
People look at Japan and the United States and they say, okay, that's a dead end.
So increasingly, the people want somebody with a plan but they don't have the patience to allow a party to actually go forward and express exactly what they're going to do and give them the time to do it.
Remember, these problems that we're talking about have arisen.
As Professor Mahoney says and Professor Ong was indicating, these are all old problems. You don't solve old problems that basically stem back to post World War II era within one administration.
It's not like waving a magic wand.
These are entrenched issues.
A lot of it go to the infrastructure and the economy, and those are very difficult.
And even more difficult today as the uncertainty that surrounds international trade.
Remember, I think it's almost 40 % of South Korea's economy depends on exports.
So they're extremely vulnerable to any kind of uncertainty, and they know this.
This is going to be, these next couple of years under Donald Trump, is going to be extremely difficult.
No one wants to invest because you don't know what to invest in, because you don't know if there'll be a return.
If you invest on Trump's policies, he'll be gone in three and a half years.
And perhaps in 18 months, he will lose his majorities in the House and the Senate and will basically be a lame duck.
So, I mean, there's, it's just the uncertainty leads to a really kind of a downward spiral where lack of investment means a lack of jobs, lack of jobs means lack of money.
You know, it just goes down and down.
And I wish globally, it's not just a problem that South Korea or Japan or China, this is a time for regionalism, or at least, you know, resurrecting things like the WTO so that there can be a renewed certainty.
And also trying to find economic drivers that weren't there before.
We have the digital revolution.
People are concerned about, oh, it's going to take jobs.
But we have this huge, untapped reservoir of economic activity called small and medium sized business entities, which are the vast majority of the GDP, employment, taxes, et At least in China, it's about 60 % of tax revenues.
These are entities that are the future, by definition.
They start out small and they become bigger.
So this is where you need leaders who are saying, okay, we have a plan for the future, but I don't hear that.
Even from him, he's just saying, well, I'm going to manage what I have for the moment.
Okay, well, Professor Mahoney, just now Iner said South Korea has this history of political retribution with six of the nine presidents since 1980 facing impeachment or criminal charges.
Why has this cycle become so entrenched in South Korean politics and do you think President Lee will be able to break this pattern?
I think the key for him at this point is whether or not he can simply make real progress that would therefore, you know, endear him to, to voters, and to the country in a way that would make it largely irrelevant what comes next.
I'd like to go back to something that that Ira was saying in order to flesh out this point, and that is, sometime, I think, in the mid 90s, I think South Korea has assessed as having broken through to the high -income country status.
I may have that number mistaken, but I believe that's the case.
And South Korea is distinctive from Japan and other countries, and so much as it managed managed to avoid the middle income trap.
It managed to move forward with digital transformation.
You know, 20 years ago, we used to speak about Japan being one of the top countries in the world in terms of electronics and digital development.
And now it's not even in the top 10.
South Korea, I think by some accounts, is in the top three or four.
And certainly, you know, at the cutting edge of a lot of tech development.
So, the interesting point is that South Korea was able to punch through and reach this advanced economy status, but it did so with these old paradigms, these old entrenched political systems that many fear have For and, you know, created a lot of trouble.
Let's go back just for a brief moment, but you know, before you we had Moon, and before you, Moon, I think it was Park, right, and Park was, it was later determined that she had been elected with the South Korea intelligence agency, the equivalent of the South Korea CIA, manipulating the election.
And this was later, admitted and they apologize for this.
But this was because, you know, they wanted to overturn the Sunshine Policy towards North Korea.
They wanted to take a stronger position, the conservatives wanted to take a stronger position against China.
We saw Yoon softening Korea's position with Japan and although I think that's a positive thing, and what we saw with Yoon being ousted and South Korea coming under Trump's tariffs as well was suddenly a willingness for South Korea, Japan, and China to discuss how they could work together to resist this global trade war.
Thank you, we've been talking to Joseph Gregory Mahoney, Professor of Politics and International Relations at East China Normal University Einar Tian -yin, Senior Fellow at Tai He Institute and Chairman of Asian Narratives Substack Rongying, Chair Professor with the School of International Studies at Sichuan University Reminder listeners if you want to hear this episode again or to catch up on previous episodes just download our podcast by searching world today and for further discussion you can follow us on Let's take a short break here.
Coming back, we'll continue our discussion.
Please stay tuned. Welcome back.
You are listening to World Today.
I am Zhao Ying, joined by Vong Ying, chair professor with the School of International Studies at Sichuan University.
Joseph Gregory Mahoney, professor of politics and international relations at East China Normal University.
Arnold Tianyin, senior fellow at Tai He Institute and chairman of Asia Narratives Sub -Stack.
Professor Vong, beyond the political crisis, what do you think are the most pressing demands of South Korean voters, and how do you think Lee Jae -min is going to solve those problems?
I think the two previous panelists have all touched upon the questions you raised and I think to some extent have given their answers to the deep -rooted and structural problems So, that's all we've got for tonight.
we look at the progress and achievement that South Korea has made.
to of divisions, social, I mean, polarisations, and I suspect that, even though I'm not such an expert on that, I just suspect that behind that polarisation, political, and divisions, the are, I mean, these are the factors.
These are real sort of reasons for the problem, And to address these problems or how to address the problem were determine and define whoever comes to power.
And now with President Lee coming to power and I think he will be apt to face up with these problems. His inaugural address and his campaigns have given some ideas about what is going on, but they are very much only in terms of rhetoric.
It will take not only time, but political determination, and I don't see what is becoming Why is in the late 1990s, the Asian financial crisis in the global financial crisis, 10 years later, 2008 and 2009.
Now, we're having another crisis that has been equally affecting South Korea.
U .S. well, again, maybe it will make even another sort of panel discussion about that.
Yeah, yeah. Well, I know.
What do you think will be at the center of his economic policy?
Because in his inaugural speech, he actually said, growth and distribution are not contradictions.
They complement each other.
So how is he going to balance economic growth with his commitments to welfare and wealth distribution?
Well, inevitably, he's going to have to turn to some sort of helicopter money, this idea that you distribute money, and you use that as a basis to stimulate the economy.
It's a modern monetary theory.
I don't believe that that, you can do that forever.
Obviously, during periods of crisis, you can.
But let's look at South Korea.
Both my colleagues have indicated that the people there are unhappy.
And we all acknowledge that this is not something that's just happened in the last six months.
This has been happening for a long period of time.
The economy has been moving sideways.
Their economic benefit, I'd say added value, has been depreciating.
They're trapped in political and military alliances, which are not to their benefit.
So it's going to take him more than just saying I'm going to try to redistribute things and get the economy going.
How are you going to do that?
And at this point as I said we'll probably use MMT, Modern Monetary Theory, to try to stimulate the government.
I don't know that that's enough with an economy that is 40 % dependent, exports, it's really going to take a global economy there.
He cannot replace that much internally within South Korea.
I was just there recently on Half Korea and it was his Korean family.
I can tell you that they don't see life as really good.
The older generation has quite a bit of wealth, but the younger generation is just, they're almost detached from society.
I talked to some of my youngest members and they just said, well, there's no hope.
You know, no matter what you do, you just get a lot of pressure, but the pressure doesn't result in any kind of benefits.
They feel trapped inside it.
So as much as anything, And you can try to curry favor with people, but in the end, you have to change the realities.
And the reality is that South Korea is an economic driver.
That's why I was suggesting that they start turning to their middle classes away from their chairballs that have been controlling things.
The old economic model where it's all about economies of scale and more, drive it more in terms of innovation.
I think this is really the only way that you can go forward. Professor Mahoney, what urgent reforms do you believe are needed to solve those pressing issues that Einar just now mentioned?
Well, I agree with Einar that you know, the big vulnerability is the 40 percent export -driven economy, and the fact that you can't just walk away from the model that's feeding you in a moment when you're facing headwinds, yeah this is this this is the problem is you know the wolf has come to the door in the form of Donald Trump who's threatening both the security arrangement but also exports through the tariffs that he's imposed.
This means that your position is is more strident.
So how do you reform in in the midst of that in the midst of those challenges, in other words reform becomes even more dear, even even more difficult to to advance.
Now, we know that in the past, he seems to have, you know, claimed some sort of political and ideological kinship with with figures like Franklin Delano Roosevelt, we know that previously he, you know, advocated things like guaranteed basic income.
But again, how do you actually advance these things, how do you actually pay for them without resorting to a debt -fueled economy, which would be unsustainable?
I think this is something that a lot of South Koreans want to avoid.
They want to avoid that sort of problem that has haunted Japan for so long.
What we're seeing are the limits of so -called liberalism being exposed on a global scale.
And this is one of the reasons why you had, I believe, his predecessor flirting with martial law, why you had Trump flirting with not recognizing the election after he lost his reelection attempt following his first term, why you see the growing right wing movements and polarization in Europe that there's this broad perception that you can't simply talk about liberating women or recognizing minorities or advancing democracy if you don't actually push through real reforms that financially, economically are transformative for real people and do so in a way that's sustainable, sustainable, not simply
in the over the long term economically, but sustainable in terms of making sure that you don't worsen climate change or that you don't broach worse relations with with other countries and create new security risks.
So this is the problem that a lot of countries are facing.
And again, what's really interesting is that one of the things that South Korea was really, really banking on was that it had risen to this incredible position in the global economy in this sort of WTO rules based system, and that South Korea was now going to be a heavy hitter in terms of ensuring the security of that system and even having some input on its reforms. And what we see is that being attacked by its first security ally, in addition to the security economic risks that the US is bringing to it.
So all of these things have created pressures on top of pressures.
And it bodes ill for South Korea, in terms of him being able to construct, I think, meaningful reforms that would follow the line of pragmatism.
Yeah. Well, Professor Rong, let's discuss his foreign policy because he said he will strengthen alliance with the U .S., while also pursuing pragmatic diplomacy centered on national interests with neighboring countries.
So what might this balancing act look like in practice?
Yeah. Before I answer your question, let me just go back a little bit about the agenda of President Lee.
I think he does have something in his mind when he talked about flexible pragmatic government, talking about that formula of three, four, five, seven sort of framework, which means you would And the top priority and unfortunately I think that because of political chaos and the past six months and also of course the coming bad of Trump administration and its shift vis -a -vis its allies and foreign policy in general it raised again a lot of even bigger questions for the new administration.
We are expecting important phone calls between the two leaders, but the top on the agenda is of course the shape of the Alliance.
But the most pressing issue is the tariff issues, as we have seen, that first and foremost the deadlines are coming.
and how to reach the deadline by reaching a deal with the Trump administration is something I think not only a race against time, but also against the questions we have been talking about.
the last but not least of course the its relationship with the region so we're talking about certainly with Japan and with with his I mean the North Korea and of course with China and Russia we certainly we can look at me talk about later all creates a lot of sort of challenges for President Lee.
So being pragmatic, flexible is good but I think not enough.
Well Aina, President Lee actually described the Trump administration's approach as introducing the law of the jungle into the international order, but also he still emphasizes the importance of the US alliance.
So how do you Do you think he is going to navigate the relations with Washington under Donald Trump?
Well, he'll do the best he can.
But I mean, let's be very clear.
The world is dividing.
The US is going in one direction.
The rest of the world is going in another.
Even when Donald Trump is gone, the bookends have moved.
The United States is no longer a reliable partner.
The fact that they say, oh, they elected Trump.
Well, that was an aberration.
It's not going to happen again.
But then, despite the fact that he has 42 felony counts against him, that he bankrupted six countries, that he has them morally questionable in almost everything he does business and personal -wise, it isn't an aberration that he's now reelected as president of the United States.
It shows that America is unhappy.
They want to change.
They want to go to this, we're going to take it all.
Somehow, the richest, most powerful country in the world has been cheated by not only its partners, but also by countries that can't even feed themselves.
It's an odd juxtaposition.
I would posit that the only thing that he can do that is meaningful is to make a choice.
That does not mean that he jumps on the side of China.
And what he does, he needs to do, is say, okay, the U .S. is not reliable.
Trying to depend on them is not going to be useful, either economically or politically.
I would be concentrating on RCEP, TPP, perhaps looking at joining BRICS, not G7.
Joining a dying organization that's relevant decreases by the moment, it's not the future.
It has to be a situation where they change things dramatically, it's going to be painful.
But either way it's going to be painful and not making a decision at this point would be fate.
Yeah, well, Professor Mahoney, Lee said South Korea has cards to play in trade talks with the U .S. So, what leverage does South Korea realistically have in negotiations with the U .S.?
Well, one of the biggest cards that it has to play is that it can pander to Trump's narcissism.
But you know, we saw during the Biden administration South Korea being forced into this chips debacle.
We saw South Korea being forced, essentially, to invest in the United States in ways that were really quite questionable for the well -being of people.
Now, he could continue some sort of policy like this, some sort of symbolic policy of you know, building factories or investing chips production capacities in the US and that may be something that Trump would be very happy to see given the general failures that he's encountered in terms of his treatment of other countries and how they've responded thus far.
Of course, he could continue to hold China at arm's length.
He could He promised not to build a free trade agreement with Japan and China.
So these are these are various cards that that he could play but, but again, I agree with Einar that I think that everyone understands that this is a dead end.
And that even you know, if you do manage to cut a deal with Trump, there's no guarantee that he would keep it, or that whoever his successor might be would keep it.
So there is a moment right now where a lot of countries, Japan, the EU and others, are thinking about strategic autonomy.
How do they de -risk themselves economically, but politically and militarily from other great powers?
And China has been trying to support those efforts in certain ways by working with free trade agreements and through organizations like BRICS, which are not imposing norms or rules on their members.
So I think there are paradigms and opportunities, but they would be costly, they would be very difficult.
And given the highly polarized nature given the very powerful conservative elements still at work in South Korean society and above all, in the South Korean security and military apparatuses.
And certainly the backbone of the economy and as much as the chaebols represent that.
It's just going to be really, really difficult for him to move in the direction of what's really in the best interest, long -term best interest of South Korea.
Well, Professor Wong, What do you think we can expect from President Lee's China policy?
Because just now, Professor Mahoney mentioned strategic autonomy.
And, actually, his party, the Democratic Party, has said it does not want South Korea drawn into the US -China rivalry.
But also we are hearing from US Defense Secretary Pete Hecksith, who warned against countries trying to maintain economic ties with China while relying on US security.
So, how do you think he's going to respond to this kind of pressure?
Well, that's a great question.
I think the, as far as I can see, that it would serve the best interest of South Korea to not only as rhetorically talking about pragmatic balance in diplomacy and in terms I mean, its relationship with United States and sort of a strategic or security ally.
And China, a close neighbor that cannot move away.
And historically, I mean culturally, that's very much important.
But even in terms of the questions, the challenges facing South Korea will take its side, and whether it will take its side of its own national interest for the sake of its much -needed sort of reform, transformation or any possible sort of attempt to find a way out of the problems we're having.
So the strategic autonomy as far as I think that serves the best interest of South Korea would come, the answer would come from, I mean, how South Korea, how the UN administration presently would find a way to navigate these problems. Another important point, that I would make is of course the regional economic sort of engagement, how South Korea, given its sort of priorities and importance would be doing.
Yeah, G7 definitely has...
I fully agree with how co -panelists, that is not a good answer.
And the current sort of economic and regional integration or regional arrangement certainly is not enough.
So I'm also very much looking forward or looking at the renewed sort of efforts if possible about the trilateral cooperation in China, South Korea and Japan.
And also I think the APEC as a regional economic collaboration, because this year in South Korea, now hosting the APEC unfortunately, because the chaos, it seems that it's been not making In but I think possibly with that, of the new government, there also could be new ideas coming out of its relationship.
I mean, engagement with its northern neighbours and in particular, I think economic engagement if we went to long -term answers for the challenges facing South Korea.
Yes, Einar, actually Lee has expressed this desire to mend ties with North Korea, and he has advocated for dialogue with North Korea as the best path to peace.
So what diplomatic steps do you think might he take to re -engage with Pyongyang?
Well, I don't know what is in his mind but I can tell you what I would suggest and that is, North Korea renounced some time ago this idea of reunification under the Kim family.
So, this is obviously an overture to settle borders, declare North Korea an independent country, create some sort of security guarantee that it won't be invaded or touched, and that its autonomy will be respected.
At that point, South Korea doesn't have any kind of security worries.
Japan is not going to invade South Korea.
Neither is China, nor is North Korea.
So, that would take a tremendous amount of emphasis away from this thinking that it's time to remilitarize and start pouring billions of dollars into defense.
It would also remove this idea that it has to be under the protective umbrella of the United States.
Once you change that, the whole tableau in poor South Korea changes dramatically.
If the U .S. is not going to be a reliable partner, and it's not necessarily needed anymore, it is time to go out and find reliable ones.
And this is where I say, going back to these regional groups, or even leading the charge of the WTO and saying, if a country decides that it will act unilaterally in violation of everything that the WTO stands for, it is time for three quarters of the countries to move, to have that country expelled and allow the WTO to be reformed and be what it's supposed to be, a trade mechanism for countries to settle disputes peaceably without resort to violence.
If that happens, he will be a hero.
He will not necessarily be liked by Washington, but Washington isn't offering anything.
Or in fact, quite the opposite.
going to be demanding that South Korea pay more for the troops that are stationed in South Korea.
Trump has made that very clear.
So it's time to stop thinking that you can straddle a divide that is growing wider by the day and choose to, as both my colleagues have said, to choose your own interests.
And those interests are in having peace and having an open road to development.
It would mean changing some of their economic policies, emphasizing small and medium -sized businesses over the chair bulls.
But the chair bulls would benefit because all of a sudden there is increased trade opportunities within North Korea.
They're out from under these kind of silly tariffs and threats by the United States.
Because if the world becomes one bloc, it is not the U .S. who has blockaded the rest of the world.
It will be the rest of the world has simply said, you are a pariah.
And in future generations, I assure you, leaders, the United States would be coming back.
But like TPP, or is originally TPP, that's CPTPP, they would be in a situation where the foundation has been reset.
It is a working mechanism that works for the benefit of the whole world and the U .S. could decide to join or not join, but it could not be in position to dictate anymore.
And this is inevitable.
The world is moving.
U .S. can say we don't want the tide to come in, but the tide is coming in and it's time for South Korea and other countries to make a decision about not just your own interests selfishly, because that just leads to the law of the jungle, because how can we have shared interests and create a better multi -polar world which exists already.
and that one that we can all live in and have this mutual benefit instead of saying that everyone should be supporting the United States because somehow that's important for the world.
Thank you Honor Tian -Yin, Senior Fellow at Tai He Institute and Chairman of Asia Narratives SUBSTAC.
Roming, Chair Professor with the School of International Studies at Sichuan University and thank you Joseph Gregory Mahoney, Professor of Politics at International Relations at East China Normal University.
And that's all the time we have for this edition of World Today.
I'm Zhao Ying, thank you so much for listening, see you next time!
