U.S. foreign policy and its lack of predictability now looks dangerous for South Korea—and that’s without considering the second and third-order effects.
Significance. Strategic flexibility — the concept that U.S. (and potentially South Korean) forces stationed on the Korean Peninsula will deploy regionally without explicit prior approval — remains one of the most contentious defense issues between Washington and Seoul. It has been conspicuously absent from electoral discourse for the presidential election.
U.S. soft power is disappearing faster than a bouffant comb-over on a windy day - and in Seoul the winds are blowing hard.
As the Trump Administration sends in troops against the wishes of the Governor of California to quell riots and near-daily ICE raids rock American cities, it’s hardly becoming to point out challenges to democracy anywhere else in the world - let alone South Korea.
Strategic flexibility—the U.S. doctrine that deems forward-deployed forces, including those in South Korea, ready to respond to crises anywhere in the region—is knitting the Korean and Taiwan theaters together once again.
Significance. President Lee’s loudspeaker suspension aligns with his liberal mandate and appeals to domestic stakeholders. Yet the lack of pre-coordination with the Trump Administration reflects a critical oversight in diplomatic choreography.
Geography is more than a backdrop—it often shapes the grand arcs of national strategy. While political will, technology, ideology, and the vagaries of fortune do override geography, it is always momentary. Like the rocks and earth on which it rests, geography tells tales over millenia, not centuries or decades.
At the moment, it’s impossible to escape. The parade of think tank briefs, university reports, blog posts, and earnest social media threads is already in full swing. After all, the moment seems irresistible — a relatively new U.S. president and a freshly minted South Korean one.
The Lee Administration faces a dilemma. It wants to clean up the internet. And who can blame it? The country’s digital spaces—once the pride of a hyper-connected, democratic society—have become a swamp of hate speech, deepfake porn, conspiracy theories, and coordinated harassment. Social media reform is not just overdue; it’s essential.
It was inevitable. Like watching porn in tracksuit pants, America’s left-leaning commentators can’t hide their fondness for Lee Jae-myung. A plucky human rights lawyer who survived child labor in a factory; a human rights lawyer; and someone who stared down authoritarianism at the barricades. It’s classic Western leftist fetishism—a script-ready narrative for a Michael Moore documentary. Unfortunately, this sentimental packaging misunderstands both Lee and Korea.
