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Korea is vulnerable to Trump diplomatic storm

Posted January. 17, 2017 07:03,   

Updated January. 17, 2017 07:15

한국어

U.S. President-elect Donald Trump will inaugurate three days later, but Korea is defenseless to the foreign policy fallout that the Trump administration will bring about. Under the current acting president system of South Korea, the political sector is neglecting pending diplomatic security issues as they are obsessed in the upcoming presidential election.

At the government complex in central Seoul on Monday morning, Acting President Hwang Kyo-ahn presided a meeting titled "Examination of the Current State of East Asia and Korean Peninsula Conditions and Countermeasures" in which Korean ambassadors to the U.S, China, Japan, Russia and U.N. as well as economic, diplomatic and security ministers joined. "We should explain to our neighboring nations that we are stably promoting diplomatic security policies,” the acting president said at the meeting. “We should continue cooperating on the North Korean nuclear issue."

On a separate note, Foreign Minister Yoon Byung-se met the ambassadors in the afternoon as he hosted a meeting with major high ranking officials from relevant ministries, stressing the need to "maintain consistency and continuity of policies." Yoon implied that policies such as the THAAD deployment and Japanese comfort women issue are here to stay.

However, the uncertainty surrounding the Trump administration and heightening North Korea risk are raising more concerns of the lack of diplomatic leadership in South Korea. National Security Office chief Kim Kwan-jin met U.S. National Security Advisor nominee Michael Flynn on Jan. 9 and painted a rosy picture, saying "It is not yet time to talk about the defense costs of U.S military troops in Korea." Three days later, however, Trump's nominee for secretary of defense, James Mattis, declared publicizing the defense cost issue at his confirmation hearing.

Thomas Hubbard, former U.S. ambassador to Korea and currently Hubbard Korea Society chief, told the Dong-A Ilbo that it is time that all agents in the Korean society including the government and companies should show extraordinary readiness by gathering collective wisdom against the tensions in the Trump era.



Soong-Ho Cho shcho@donga.com · Kyung-Im Woo woohaha@donga.com