The political chaos spawned by South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol’s botched decision to call martial law should not be welcomed or celebrated. One or the other is necessary to return Japan’s closest neighbor back to a semblance of political stability.
The conundrum for Tokyo, Washington and other allies of Seoul is that the potential replacement for Yoon, opposition leader Lee Jae-myung, is likely to reverse most if not all of his foreign policy initiatives — policies that have been welcomed by friends of South Korea and supporters of an international order based on the rule of law.
To illustrate, Lee has been critical of the Yoon administration’s foreign policy toward China and Taiwan, intimating that “China was South Korea’s top export market, but now South Korea is importing mostly from China. Chinese people don’t buy South Korean products because they don’t like South Korea. Why are we bothering China? We should just say ‘xie xie’ (to China) and ‘xie xie’ to Taiwan as well. Why do we interfere in cross-strait (China-Taiwan) relations? Why do we care what happens to the Taiwan Strait? Shouldn’t we just take care of ourselves?”
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