What Really Worries South Koreans: Trump

In the escalating standoff between Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un, Seoul is ground zero. Just 35 miles from the demilitarized zone, the metropolitan area of 25 million, with its fashionable, upscale entertainment bars, globe-spanning banks and new 123-story Lotte Group building, could be wiped off the map in any conflict by North Korea’s artillery, let alone its ever improving nuclear arsenal.

But it’s not Kim that the urbane population of this capital is most worried about. It is Trump’s seeming indifference to the value of Washington’s alliance with their city that confuses the citizens of Seoul. They worry that the American President, who has suggested he might abandon U.S. defense of the South, or open a trade war with it, is working with an outdated understanding of the peninsula, and the region.

At a moment when the U.S., South Korea and their Pacific partners have so much to lose, South Koreans worry that Trump isn’t helping. First there are the economic dangers. After abandoning the 12-country Trans-Pacific Partnership, Trump has threatened to pull out of America’s free-trade deal with South Korea, and there is concern that he may seek additional protectionist measures. There could be big costs in such a separation of South Korea’s interests from America’s. Already, South Korean trade with China is more than twice as great as its exports to the U.S. If America fails to support South Korea, it increases the odds that South Korea may find China a more reliable partner.

Then there are the military concerns.

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