On Sept. 4, South Korean President Lee Jae Myung finished his first three months, or one quarter, in office. He took office after six months of political turmoil that began with former President Yoon Suk Yeol’s declaration of martial law, subsequent impeachment, and an early presidential election. President Lee has moved quickly to bring stability to the nation amid economic challenges and shifting geopolitical dynamics. The public has rewarded him with positive approval ratings.

One of Lee’s biggest early challenges has been managing the relationship with the United States and its president, Donald Trump. This past April, shortly after beginning his second term, Trump began slapping tariffs on nations around the world, including a 25 percent tariff on imports from South Korea. This caused the US stock market to drop sharply, causing Trump to retreat to give nations time to negotiate trade deals with the US. On July 30, South Korea and the US reached an agreement that lowered US tariffs on Korean imports from 25 percent to 15 percent. In return, South Korea pledged $350 billion in US investments, including $150 billion in shipbuilding and $100 billion in liquefied natural gas.

On Aug. 25, Lee and Trump held their first summit at the White House. The summit was designed to highlight economic cooperation, reaffirm the alliance and find common ground on relations with North Korea. Hours before the meeting, Trump posted on social media, “WHAT IS GOING ON IN SOUTH KOREA? Seems like a Purge or Revolution. We can’t have that and do business there.” This rocked social media for a few hours, but Trump greeted Lee warmly and the two leaders got on well.

The Oval Office photo-op turned press conference that many foreign leaders have come to dread went particularly well as Lee charmed Trump and affirmed support for his dream of playing a “peacemaker” on the Korean peninsula. Lee had clearly prepared for the meeting and used diplomatic finesse to establish a good rapport with the mercurial Trump. The summit ended on a positive note and was heralded as a success in South Korea.

President Lee’s approach is easy to understand, but President Trump’s sudden shift in mood remains a mystery. Trump’s burning desire for a Nobel Peace Prize is most likely behind the change. His overtures to Russian President Vladimir Putin have fallen flat despite the high-profile summit in Alaska. Rumbles of impending peace talks between Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy faded in the week after the Alaska summit.

By the time Trump met Lee, his attention was turning to another venue that offers him a chance to play peacemaker: the Korean Peninsula. Lee had previously reached out to North Korea to establish dialogue, but Kim Yo-jong, leader Kim Jong-un’s sister, poured cold water on that effort. In Trump’s eyes, Lee’s outreach turns him into an ally in any effort to negotiate a flashy peace deal with North Korea. This explains why his comments in the Oval Office kept returning to North Korea.

As long as Trump remains interested in the Nobel Prize, he will continue to support overtures to North Korea unless he wins the prize from efforts in another venue. President Lee wants to revive the efforts to reach out to North Korea that have been the hallmark of every center-left president since Kim Dae-jung. And as long as the two men’s approaches to North Korea are aligned, the positive rapport will most likely continue, which should help stabilize the relationship between the two countries.

Neither Lee nor Trump can run for reelection. Trump’s term ends in January 2029, while Lee’s ends in June 2030. This means that Lee will have a year and a half of his term with a post-Trump US president. Nobody knows who that will be, but one thing is for certain: generational change. The most talked about candidates are a mix of Gen X and millennials, both of which have a different worldview from baby boomers who, except Joe Biden, have held the office since Bill Clinton in 1993.

For South Korea, this means that the next US president will come from a generation with less interest in projecting US influence. Millennials, in particular, are impatient for change in a wide range of domestic policies and wary of US unilateralism. Though difficult to imagine now, the next US president will most likely seek to deepen cooperation with South Korea while leaving North Korean outreach to President Lee and his successor, as it should be.

Robert J. Fouser

Robert J. Fouser, a former associate professor of Korean language education at Seoul National University, writes on Korea from Providence, Rhode Island. He can be reached at robertjfouser@gmail.com. The views expressed here are the writer’s own. — Ed.

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