Tag: Moon Jae-in

Here is the latest headline from John Bolton’s book:

U.S. President Donald Trump didn’t want South Korean President Moon Jae-in to join him during his third meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un in the demilitarized zone (DMZ) in June 2019, according to John Bolton, the former U.S. national security adviser, in his memoir.    
   
“The Room Where It Happened,” the Bolton memoir set to be published Tuesday, details the three Kim-Trump meetings and the considerable amount of energy expended by Bolton to thwart any U.S. concessions to North Korea.  
   
In a tweet on June 28, 2019, Trump — who was on an official trip to Japan and Korea — offered to shake hands and say hello with North Korean leader Kim, which led to the impromptu meeting days later on June 30 in the inter-Korean truce village of Panmunjom. This marked the first time a sitting U.S. president stepped onto North Korean soil, and took place during Trump’s visit to Seoul for a summit with Moon.    
   
According to Bolton, “Trump wanted Moon nowhere around, but Moon was determined to be present, making it a trilateral meeting if he could.” Bolton had “entertained the faint hope that this dispute with Moon could tank the whole thing, because it was certain Kim didn’t want Moon around.” 

Joong Ang Ilbo

You can read more at the link.

Why are these people in the Moon administration surprised by any of this? This is all straight out of the North Korean playbook:

 The office of President Moon Jae-in strongly condemned the sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un on Wednesday for her “rude and senseless” criticism of Moon and warned that it won’t tolerate the North’s unreasonable words and acts anymore.

“It is a senseless act to disparage (Moon’s speech earlier this week) in a very rude tone without understanding its purpose at all,” Yoon Do-han, Cheong Wa Dae’s senior secretary for public communication, said in a war of words between the two Koreas. (……..)

It’s an “unprecedentedly unreasonable” act to deliberately distort the purpose of the proposal, he stressed, adding that the North should have “basic etiquette.”

The North said Moon had “begged” it to accept his scheme to send either National Security Director Chung Eui-yong and National Intelligence Service Director Suh Hoon as a special envoy.

Making public such a sensitive issue unilaterally is something of a taboo in diplomacy and other state-to-state relationships.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link, but as long as Seoul’s response continues to be strongly worded statements they will continue to keep being pushed around by the Kim regime. They know there will never be any real consequences for their provocations as long as Moon is in power.

It is pretty clear that Kim Jong-un is using his sister to be the hard liner to push the Moon administration to make as many concessions as possible. When concessions are made then Kim Jong-un will pop up looking like a reasonable peacemaker.

This should come as no surprise to people following this topic that the ruling Democratic Party in Korea is expected to win the parliamentary election that just occurred:

The ruling Democratic Party (DP) is forecast to win a majority of parliamentary seats in Wednesday’s elections as voters apparently supported the government’s efforts to contain the new coronavirus.

South Korea held the quadrennial parliamentary elections to fill the 300-member unicameral National Assembly — with 253 directly contested seats and 47 proportional representation (PR) slots — in the midst of the country’s battle against the COVID-19 pandemic.

As of 11:24 p.m. when 58.2 percent of the votes had been counted, the DP had taken the lead in 154 constituencies across the nation, followed by the main opposition United Future Party (UFP) with 94 districts, according to the National Election Commission (NEC), the state election watchdog.

If combined with potential PR seats to be distributed to the Platform Party, the DP’s satellite party that only targets PR slots, the ruling bloc may be able to secure around 170 parliamentary seats.

South Korea’s general elections have been closely watched from overseas as the country became the first major country to hold nationwide polls since the COVID-19 crisis began sweeping the globe.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link, but the ruling party had a number of factors going for them to ensure they won the election. The coronavirus response by the Moon administration is obviously the most prevalent. The administration overall did a good job handling the pandemic and even the areas where they obviously screwed up they did not have to worry about a partisan media continuing to hype it like what you see in the US with the Trump administration.

The Moon administration very early on in their tenure made sure to take control of most of the media in the country to include jailing journalists who publish articles they do not agree with. This led to largely positive domestic and then international press coverage even though the administration’s pandemic response was not as strong as other countries in the region.

The ruling party also passed an election law bill that ultimately allowed them to increase the amount of unelected proportional parliament members. The Democrat Party then went and created satellite parties that shared their same ideology to take these proportional seats. This effectively decreased the amount of seats their conservative rivals could win in the elections.

Then you throw in the online opinion rigging to include the Democratic Party reportedly being backed by China’s 50 Cent Army it should come as no surprise they were able to win the parliamentary elections. What we have to wonder about is what comes next? Will the Korean left use their political power to try and change the ROK constitution to give President Moon another term in office? Or will they also use it to advance their Kaesong and Gumgang Resorts projects and ultimately their confederation ideas with North Korea? I guess we will find out over the next two years of what will largely be an unchecked Moon administration.

It looks like South Korea’s ruling party is going to do very well in the upcoming parliamentary elections, especially when you consider all the underhanded tactics they have implemented as well to ensure they win:

The official pointed out that President Moon’s approval rating rose to its highest level in more than a year at 52.9 percent in a survey released by pollster Realmeter, April 2. The disapproval rating was 44 percent, down 0.1 percentage points from a week earlier.

The survey result came after the President announced a massive financial aid package for low-income households and small businesses as part of his government’s efforts to prop up the coronavirus-battered economy.

Realmeter noted that the self-employed and other small-business owners were behind the rise in Moon’s approval rating.

Some 49.6 percent of them, up from 44.8 percent in the previous poll, said Moon was doing a good job.

The DPK also had 43 percent support, while the UFP had 28.2 percent.

The gap between the two parties had narrowed to just a little more than 5 percent in late February, when the government fell short of taking preemptive measures against the spread of the coronavirus.

Korea Times

The Korean public clearly has short memories about how President Moon initially refused to stop travel from China which helped lead to a surge of coronavirus cases in South Korea. Blaming the Shincheonji church for the spread obviously worked to blunt the Chinese travel criticism. Since then I agree the pandemic has been managed very well.

Here is the latest of President Moon’s approval rating:

Realmeter polling company said Monday that 50.7 percent of the people it surveyed said they disapprove of Moon’s performance, up 1.6 percentage points from the previous week. The poll was conducted from Tuesday till Friday last week at the request of YTN. 

Moon’s approval rating was 46.1 percent in the fourth week of February, down by 1.3 percentage points from the third week of February, according to the poll. The gap between the approval rating and disapproval rating was 4.6 percentage points, which went up higher than the margin of error for the first time in four weeks. 

In Daegu and North Gyeongsang, where infections are skyrocketing day by day, Moon’s approval rating was 30.1 percent, while his disapproval rating was 65 percent. “The coronavirus outbreak will become the most critical factor in the politics in the coming weeks,” Realmeter said. 

Joong Ang Ilbo

You can read more at the link.