The Korea Test

This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.

The New York Sun

It’s starting to look like the confrontation with the North Korea’s communist regime isn’t the only test of President Trump’s sagacity in respect of Korea. There is also the election in the free South Korean republic, where, in the wake of all the drama a centrist candidate has emerged from the back of the pack to become a contender in the vote on May 9. If he wins we’d like to think all the attention the Trump administration has paid to Korea is being rewarded.

Only a few weeks ago, things were looking decidedly dicey. First it was the ouster of the country’s hardline elected president, Park Guen-hye. She is the daughter of the country’s late strongman, Park Chung Hee, who was assassinated when his daughter was 10. She grew up to be president, only to be impeached for corruption and cashiered from office. In her final weeks as president, she wandered alone in the presidential palace where she’d spent her childhood.

Shakespeare couldn’t make up that touch. Nor, with Ms. Park’s ouster, the rise of a new left-of-center faction headed by Moon Jae-in. As a student, according to several accounts on the Web, he was expelled from university for protesting the Yushin Constitution, under which Ms. Park’s father had consolidated power. Mr. Moon is an advocate of entente — even federation — with North Korea. His election would spell the possibility of a capitulation to the communists.

Our own hunch — it is only such — is that North Korea’s Kim Jong-un has ratcheted up his saber-rattling precisely to buffalo the free Koreans, already nervous from America’s general retreat during the Obama years, into voting for Mr. Moon. For a while it looked like Kim Jong Un’s saber rattling was working. And it might yet. At the latest check, Mr. Moon and his Minjoo Party maintain a lead in at least some of the polls.

All the more dramatic, though, the sudden emergence of a centrist contender in the May 9th contest. The dark horse is the centrist People’s Party candidate, Ahn Cheol-soo, who leads in four of more than two dozen polls taken in April. Four polls certainly don’t add up to a victory in and of themselves. The direction of movement, though, suggests that at least as the election gets closer Mr. Ahn is moving in the right direction.

This is a moment to mark that since President Trump’s inauguration, a raft of top American officials have made the trip to Free Korea. These include Secretary of Defense Mattis, who visited Seoul in early February and underscored the importance of the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense system known as Thaad. He was followed by Secretary of State Tillerson, who warned that the era of “strategic patience” with North Korea is over.

Most importantly, Vice President Pence spent Easter in Free Korea, including, as had General Mattis and Secretary Tillerson, a visit to the Demilitarized Zone. Good for Mr. Pence. Good for President Trump. Whether these kinds of gestures prove successful in reassuring the Korean voters, we won’t know until the 9th. The fact that there’s a free election, though, is a reminder of the glories of a forward American foreign policy in the post-World War II and post-Soviet era.


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