President Donald Trump and South Korean President Lee Jae Myung held their long-anticipated summit on Monday. The meeting was overdue but had to wait for the Republic of Korea to restore stable governance by electing a replacement for the ousted Yoon Suk-yeol.
By all accounts, the session went well. Lee said that the two leaders “had very good conversations” and the experience “was beyond my expectations.” Acting as Flatterer-in-Chief, the South Korean president spread praise of Trump thick and wide.
However, Jeongmin Kim of NKNews reports the summit “nearly veered off course before it began, exposing just how vulnerable the U.S.-ROK alliance is to Trump’s impulsive messaging and the disinformation networks surrounding him.” Indeed, Lee later said he had feared “a Zelensky moment.” Three hours before the two presidents were scheduled to meet, Trump spluttered on Truth Social: “WHAT IS GOING ON IN SOUTH KOREA? Seems like a Purge or Revolution. We can’t have that and do business there.” He then told reporters that he “heard that there were raids on churches over the last few days, very vicious raids on churches by the new government in South Korea.”
Lee, along with members of Washington’s “blobby” Korea policy community, held their collective breath. There was much for the two presidents to talk about, starting with the broad if disputed trade agreement reached in response to Trump’s protectionist assault. Alliance management, too, was on the agenda. South Korean National Defense Minister Ahn Gyu-back has been pushing for a “future-oriented comprehensive strategic alliance.” Also of pressing concern was policy toward North Korea, a special priority in Seoul, with Unification Minister Chung Dong-young proposing to scale back joint military exercises. That is also a priority, albeit a less pressing one, in Washington, with Trump seeking a reprise of his first-term summitry.
Luckily, when Trump and Lee met, the former dismissed his own prior outburst, explaining that he was “sure it’s a misunderstanding.” Trump added: “I feel very warmly toward South Korea.” There was speculation that Trump had been referring to raids on the Unification Church in connection with a corruption investigation of former first lady Kim Keon-hee.
Perhaps even more important have been complaints in MAGA circles about the current government’s prosecution of the ousted president Yoon for last December’s autogolpe. Last month, Fred Fleitz, vice chairman of the American First Policy Institute and former National Security Council staffer in the first Trump administration, posted on X: “The perception that former President Yoon is being persecuted or unfairly prosecuted will be received very badly by the Trump administration.” He reportedly told Lee’s national security adviser, Wi Sung-lac, that Yoon should not be investigated or prosecuted “unfairly.” Fleitz explained to the Chosun Ilbo that “the perception that former President Yoon is being unfairly treated, persecuted, or given an excessive sentence would be viewed very negatively in the U.S.” He added, “Although the situations differ, Trump also faced political persecution after leaving office. Many in Trump’s circle are closely watching South Korea’s political situation, especially the recent presidential election and its aftermath.”
When speaking to visiting parliamentarians, Fleitz apparently voiced concerns about judicial integrity. Na Kyung-won, a member of Yoon’s People Power Party, commented: “The fact that they addressed the fairness of legal proceedings involving the former president from a human rights perspective struck me as a significant message to the ruling party and administration.” Of course, Trump’s first term was notable for its lack of “a human rights perspective” and of concerns over “the fairness of legal proceedings.” After Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman had dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi murdered and dismembered, Trump infamously gloated that “I saved his ass” and “was able to get Congress to leave him alone.” If the liberal Lee was being prosecuted by the conservative Yoon administration, it is unlikely that Fleitz or anyone else associated with Trump would object.
Fleitz said he was speaking for himself, but he is part of a group of American conservatives, including China doomsayer Gordon Chang and Liberty University Professor Morse Tan, who have been promoting dubious claims that Beijing rigged South Korea’s National Assembly elections last year, one of Yoon’s justifications for seizing power, and also manipulated this year’s presidential poll. Indeed, Tan has advanced these views in South Korea as well. The reporter Jeongmin Kim said, “The resulting feedback loop between conservative U.S. and ROK political media raises questions about the extent to which domestic disinformation can distort alliance management.” Critical sentiments have evidently infiltrated the White House, which indirectly included a seeming caveat when congratulating Lee on his victory in June: “The U.S.-ROK Alliance remains ironclad. While South Korea had a free and fair election, the United States remains concerned and opposed to Chinese interference and influence in democracies around the world.”
Added to the dubious claim of Chinese interference is Trump’s identification with foreign coup plotters on the political right. For instance, he imposed a 50 percent tariff on Brazil for prosecuting former president Jair Bolsonaro for allegedly attempting to seize power there. “This happened to me, times 10,” Trump declared, adding that he “will be closely monitoring the witch hunt of Jair Bolsonaro, his family, and thousands of his supporters. Leave Bolsonaro alone!” There is, however, no doubt that Bolsonaro’s followers sought to overturn the election, while his involvement in the resulting “criminal organization” is contested. President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, known as Lula, understandably rejected Trump’s demand.
It would be even more disturbing for Trump to endorse Yoon. Despite desperate attempts to minimize the disgraced former president’s culpability, he plotted with friendly generals and political cronies to dismantle South Korean democracy and return to military rule, which was more brutal than most Americans realize. General Park Chung-hee seized control in 1961. Although he modernized and liberalized the economy, sparking the ROK’s dramatic economic take-off, he established a savage dictatorship. His pretense of democracy fooled no one. The reference website Facts and Details documents:
Park cracked down on intellectuals, students, religious leaders, workers and justified his actions by accusing them of collaborating with Communists. Dissidents were followed and had their tax records scrutinized. Church meetings were monitored by men who “never sing hymns, refuse the collection plate and frequently take pictures of worshipers.” Teachers were arrested for failing to teach their students that Park’s regime was the leader of the world’s greatest liberal democracy. Park ran South Korea with an iron fist. He ruthlessly cracked down on unions and the press, routinely imprisoned and purged anyone who spoke up against him, and used the Korean Central Intelligence Agency (KCIA) to torture and silence and opponents. At one time it was estimated that there were 30,000 KCIA agents.
Park was assassinated in 1979. Soon taking power through another coup was the equally vicious Chun Doo-hwan. Amid growing public protests he stepped down in 1987. Choi Jin, director of the Institute for Presidential Leadership in Seoul said after Chun’s death: “His positive achievements are far outweighed by his negative legacies—the illegitimate way he came to power and the dictatorial streak that ran through his term.” The low point of his rule was the violent suppression of demonstrations in the city of Gwangju, into which he “sent special forces, including tanks and helicopter gunships … . Soldiers beat civilians in the streets, and tanks and helicopters fired indiscriminately.” Hundreds were killed. Years later he was convicted of sedition and mutiny and sentenced to death, though that penalty was eventually commuted.
Unexpectedly, Lieutenant Colonel Kim Oh-rang, who died resisting Chun’s coup, has returned to public view. Two weeks ago a Seoul court ruled that the state “is responsible for paying compensation for the mental suffering suffered by the bereaved family due to the manipulation of the substantive truth about the circumstances of Lieutenant Colonel Kim’s death by the rebels and related public officials after Lieutenant Colonel Kim’s death.” A similar tragedy was avoided in December only because soldiers were unwilling to wage war on their countrymen.
Yoon bears heavy responsibility. He called out the troops and planned to disperse the national legislature, seize critical media, arrest leading political figures (including Lee, then leader of the Democratic Party, and Han Dong-hoon, head of Yoon’s own PPP), torture National Election Commission members, and even execute other figures. There also are credible allegations that Yoon loosed drones upon the North in hopes of provoking a military response, to justify his declaration of martial law.
For all this he offered no serious defense: The president acted, the troops moved, and the participants confessed. When facing impeachment and under indictment, he hid in the presidential residence behind friendly crowds. So egregious was his conduct that members of his own party provided the extra votes required to impeach him. Since his ouster by the Constitutional Court, dominated by conservative appointees, he has increasingly engaged in self-parody. Earlier this month, reported CNN, Yoon “again refused to attend questioning by investigators Friday, using a new method to resist: He took off his prison uniform and lay down on the floor at his detention room.”
Subscribe Today
Get daily emails in your inbox
Moreover, the now-opposition PPP demonstrates shocking indifference to Yoon’s assault on a democracy barely four decades removed from military rule. The party recently chose as chairman lawmaker Jang Dong-hyuk, who called the attempted coup “God’s will” and threatened to expel those who backed impeachment. For other South Koreans, however, the fairness demanded by Fleitz requires punishment of Yoon. Park Sang-hyuk, a DP spokesman, observed: “in accordance with a just legal order, if convicted of insurrection, he will face either the death penalty or life imprisonment and spend the rest of his life behind bars.”
Indeed, Lee could not maintain his own credibility if he yielded to foreign pressure over the judgment on someone who planned to jail Lee and many of those serving in his administration. Policing South Korean politics should be up to the South Koreans, not Washington.
President Trump was right to drop the issue. Perhaps he is beginning to recognize the benefits, and limits, of diplomacy. Arrogance by a nation that purports to lead the free world is both unbecoming and dangerous. “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely,” intoned the historian Lord Acton, and that aphorism applies to the United States. The president was elected to govern America, not anointed to run the affairs of other nations—including those of a proud, nationalist people like the South Koreans.
