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Why the domestic troubles of Trump & Moon are grave news for Koreans

POLITICIANS DO THEIR WORST DIPLOMACY WHEN THEY’RE WEAK AT HOME. SCANDAL TEMPTS THEM TO SEEK GLORY ABROAD. The hyenas of the world’s ecosystem see them limp and decide to prey on them, or on the calves they can’t protect. Of Mr. Trump’s troubles, you already know plenty that I need not repeat here. Whatever your view of those troubles, they aren’t going away, and if you correctly acknowledge their political element, they’re apt to be more serious next January. The North Koreans know this, and given their successful flattery and manipulation of Mr. Trump thus far, it’s a sure bet they’re already making plans to exploit his troubles. The ineptitude of Trump’s personal diplomacy, his interest in doubling down on his errors, and his appointment of a near novice as his special envoy all spell trouble for Korea, and for us.

Moon Jae-in’s fortunes are also declining. That is inevitable for all politicians at the end of their honeymoons ” and especially for glib ones who make grand and gauzy promises. Moon’s poll numbers have now fallen from the ionosphere. This is not to say that he’s in any real danger yet. He still has 60 percent approval and won’t face a serious electoral contest until April 2020. What’s more, most of the support he has lost has gone to the even more extreme Justice Party, not to the nonexistent center or the hapless right. But his support will continue to decline if he continues to delegate the stewardship of Korea’s economy to graduates of the Hugo Chavez School of Economics. As with Trump, Moon’s domestic troubles could have a number of unfortunate side effects beyond the misery South Koreans will consequently experience. One is that he will put even more emphasis on creating the appearance of “progress” in talks with Pyongyang. Because Pyongyang has total control over that “progress,” Moon will be even more tempted to support its most extortionate demands.

Moon will also be tempted to censor his political opponents. Although no American journalist in Korea has bothered to report it, Moon and his confederates have a habit of suing and imprisoning their critics, including journalists, using the nation’s criminal libel laws. Recently, criminal libel has emerged as an even greater threat to South Korea’s democracy than its controversial National Security Law. Despite this, Moon has managed to fool liberal foreign journalists into believing that he’s a liberal himself, even as he increasingly surrounds himself with illiberal extremists, pursues the illiberal censorship of the media, sues and jails his critics, and silences critics of Pyongyang‘s crimes.

Just this week, a court acquitted Koh Young-joo,1 a fomer media executive and prosecutor, of criminal libel for calling Moon a “communist.” Koh did not do so as a loose epithet, but based on facts he claimed to have learned in an investigation years ago. Doubtless, many readers will disagree with Koh’s opinion and his rhetoric. But the fact that Koh was forced to go through the stress and cost of a trial for peacefully, if sharply, criticizing the leader of an ostensibly liberal democracy ought to trouble everyone. That Koh was even prosecuted was an authoritarian abuse of South Korea’s Constitution, which nominally guarantees freedom of speech. Moon’s ideological history is as much a matter of legitimate public debate as Park Chung-hee’s. But as long as Moon can count on the silence of an obsequious foreign press corps, he’ll have a free hand to engage in increasingly aggressive censorship, including press censorship. At the very least, journalists should stop calling Moon a “liberal” and tell us the whole truth about this dangerous authoritarian trend.

What else might we see in the coming year? That old standby of political scoundrels everywhere: nationalism. Throughout his political life, Moon was always careful to keep a cordon sanitaire between himself and the extreme rhetoric of his closest associates that could convict him of being the arsonist of the alliance with America, even if every time a suspicious fire broke out, he was sure to be found a block away smelling strongly of gasoline. I’ve already described the wave of violent anti-Americanism that Roh Moo-hyun rode to the presidency in 2002,2  when Moon managed his campaign. I’ve noted how Moon’s mentor, Moon Chung-in, came to Washington and made a veiled threat to whip up anti-American protests if Washington impedes President Moon’s North Korea policies. Sung-Yoon Lee’s commentary on Moon’s Liberation Day speech suggests that Moon himself is now engaging in veiled appeals to nationalism as Washington raises concerns about Moon’s plans to violate U.N. sanctions and U.S. law.

Consider South Korea’s presidential Liberation Day speeches. Curiously, the causal effect of the sacrifices of U.S. servicemen in vanquishing Imperial Japan and Korean liberation are not only assiduously accorded the silent treatment, but the role of the U.S. in Korea is occasionally frowned upon. President Moon Jae-in, giving his Liberation Day speech today outdoors in the sweltering heat of Yongsan, Seoul, the site of the pre-1945 Japanese military base and post-1945 U.S. military base, did mention the “ROK-U.S. alliance,” but only in the context of the recent relocation of the U.S. base.

Calling the grounds where he stood “the center of exploitation and subjugation,” Moon remarked that Yongsan, having “long been taken away from us,” now has been “returned to the arms of the people after 114 years” and has “finally become an integral part of our territory.” The implication that the U.S. military presence in Korea was an exploitative continuation of Japanese colonialism or, at least, an unwelcome usurpation of Korean sovereignty, was noteworthy. [Sung-Yoon Lee, The Hill]

As always, Professor Lee’s entire piece is well worth reading. Note that the quoted language was carefully crafted to let Moon answer potential critics and claim that he only meant Japanese “exploitation and subjugation.” Well played, although I suspect that Moon’s anti-American base cheered for the broader and more plausible interpretation. In any event, Yongsan wasn’t the “center” of Japan’s oppressive system or colonial rule. Those would be (respectively) Sodaemun Prison and the now-demolished General Government Headquarters, seen here on Liberation Day, 1945.

[Not pictured: Kim Il-sung]

In the same speech, Moon also argued that “inter-Korean relations” are not secondary to Seoul’s relationship with America, and that Koreans — straw-man alert — are the “owners” of their own nation. If this is the direction in which Moon means to take his presidency, no one in Washington should wish him well or mourn the decline of his political support. Moon’s support might even decline faster if Mr. Trump would stop doing favors for a man who is willfully undermining a policy that Trump intermittently calls “maximum pressure.” Instead, Trump keeps helping Moon, often without the apparent intent do so. Trump’s impetuous demand, on the eve of Moon’s election, that South Korea should pay for THAAD, was one example of this. Trump’s overproduced performance of at Singapore, on the eve of South Korea’s local elections, was another.

These errors cannot be undone, but there are other decisions to come. For example, Trump should block Moon’s push for U.N. sanctions exemptions to allow joint ventures or infrastructure projects while North Korea is accelerating its nuclear and missile programs. He should object to sanctions dodges like Seoul’s proposal to share fishing waters; after all, we know that Pyongyang has overfished its own waters, will certainly export its catch for hard currency, and will certainly violate paragraph 9 of UNSCR 2371 when it does so. His administration should not reassure South Koreans that their banks and companies will face no consequences for importing North Korean coal in violation of U.N. sanctions and (probably) U.S. law to subsidize the same regime Washington is trying to sanction. We don’t have to pretend that all is calm in Korea by keeping the families of U.S. service members in installations that aren’t well protected from North Korean missiles, while Seoul drags our feet on deploying defenses. We don’t have to keep infantry, armor, artillery, and Army aviation units in Korea that should have been withdrawn decades ago, when Seoul has just announced its intention to cut 118,000 troops from its own army and is floating trial balloons about withdrawing some troops from the DMZ. We don’t have to bargain gently in cost-sharing talks with an OECD nation that spends a lower percentage of its GDP on defense than we do.

As one of his most unrestrained admirers in the media has reported, Moon has sought ways to prop Pyongyang up economically without violating sanctions. Because the brilliant legal minds in the Blue House can’t be bothered to read U.N. resolutions anyway, the “without violating sanctions” qualifier no longer matters to Moon. Now, undoubtedly under political pressure from Moon’s cabinet, South Korean banks have announced their intent to offer a series of “financial products” that will be thinly veiled sanctions violations, which would commence Pyongyang’s financial looting of South Korea, just as I’ve predicted. With that gauntlet thrown down, it is up to the Treasury Department to make clear that the full range of U.S. financial penalties — including exclusion from the financial system — will apply to banks that offer these products. 

Moon’s increasingly aggressive push to break sanctions reflects Pyongyang’s increasingly aggressive demands that he do so. I don’t know the full extent of the conversations, threats, and handshakes between Seoul and Pyongyang, of course, but it’s increasingly clear who’s really dictating South Korea’s foreign and security policies now. Deny it all you want; the Finlandization of South Korea isn’t a mere theory anymore. Pyongyang forced Moon to choose sides because, unlike Washington, it’s willing to use its leverage to force that choice. Its leverage, of course, is the growing nuclear and political hegemony about which the majority of U.S. scholars and journalists remain in an inflexible state of denial. But if the White House is getting independent, clear-eyed advice about where our interests lie, it also has substantial leverage to push Moon in the opposite direction. Why must we salve South Koreans’ anxiety about an alliance that they still overwhelmingly want? Why must we conceal the truth that Moon is endangering it by opening a widening disunity of interests? 

South Koreans must also be clear-eyed about the grave danger they face at this critical moment. It is only because of Uncle Sam’s security blanket that Moon can reassure them that his “engagement” of Pyongyang won’t gamble away their prosperity and their liberal, free-market democracy by confederating with the world’s most extreme form of totalitarianism. But just as North Vietnam saw Richard Nixon’s downfall as a time of political paralysis for us and opportunity for itself, North Korea will want to take advantage of a submissive government in Seoul and a weakened one in Washington. Trump, for his part, will want to bolster his domestic support by grasping at any slender foreign achievement, and Trump’s deal with Kim Jong-un, however flawed, may be a straw for him to grasp despite all the evidence that it’s making us less safe. That’s why Moon, as the leader of the government that spends more to lobby Washington than any other, should think carefully about trying to bolster his domestic support by calling (as Roh Moo-hyun did) for greater “independence” from the object of his patronage. There’s a very real danger that he’ll get what he asks for. We can all wish Mr. Moon the best of luck in protecting Korea’s sovereignty by signing a treaty with Xi Jinping, although I’d urge him to poll some Uygur and Tibetan exiles first.

(Photo credit)

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1. Previously said “Chung” instead of “Koh.” Thanks to Bruce Lee on Twitter for the correction.

2. Previously said 2002. Thanks to Professor Myers for the correction.

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