As expected, Moon Jae-in has been elected as South Korea’s 19th president. In a five-way contest, Moon garnered 41.1 percent of the vote, with strong support from those in their 20s to 50s, winning most of the regions in the country. 

South Koreans’ longing for change had been expressed through the now-famous candlelight demonstrations that lasted for almost twenty consecutive weekends culminating in the impeachment of now former president Park Geun-hye. It was also reflected in the highest voter turnout in two decades, at 77.2 percent.

Just hours after his decisive victory, Moon began his five-year term without the usual practice of a transition team. Moreover, he took office during turbulent times — domestically and internationally — perhaps even more so than when former president Kim Dae-jung took office in 1998 when the nation was struggling with the Asian financial crisis.

First and foremost, Moon must deal with the mounting social and economic challenges that the country is facing. Having entered a period of low-growth coupled with an aging population, the economy confronts a host of difficult issues, including high levels of youth unemployment, income inequality, household debt, elderly poverty and rising social welfare expenditures.

The Moon administration immediately established a ‘job creation committee’ and pledged to create 810,000 jobs in the public sector. But it will not be easy to amass the financial resources needed by a government already struggling with serious budget deficits. Most agree that ‘economic democratisation’ is needed, but the details of how to achieve that — including reforming the chaebol — remain unclear.

Economic uncertainties have been a key factor contributing to social unrest. Words in vogue among South Koreans in their 20s and 30s reflect the social discontent with youth unemployment and inequality that ultimately erupted in the demonstrations.

‘Hell Joseon’ captures a sentiment of what it means to live in South Korea’s hellish reality. ‘Golden Spoons Dirt Spoons’ levels the charge that one’s life course is decided for good by one’s family background. ‘Gapjil’ refers to acts of impunity by the powerful against the weak, while the ‘Sampo generation’ is a generation forced to give up three things: courtship, marriage and children. If Moon fails to live up to the expectations of the country’s youth, a bloc that widely supported him, social discontent and symptoms of unrest will likely return.

Moon also faces daunting tasks in national security matters. North Korea has continued to develop weapons of mass destruction and relations have been all but completely severed. As controversy over the deployment of THAAD (Terminal High Altitude Area Defense) has shown, South Korea remains caught in the middle of a hegemonic struggle between the United States and China.

If that wasn’t enough, South Korea made a deal with Japan on the comfort women issue in late 2015 but the public now demands its renegotiation. South Korean–Russian relations are also at their grimmest. To top it all off, Moon must deal with a formidable set of nationalist and populist leaders — Donald Trump, Xi Jinping, Shinzo Abe, Kim Jong-un and Vladimir Putin — all known for their very strong characters, in stark contrast to Moon’s nice-guy, everyman personality.

The most urgent but also most challenging task is managing inter-Korean relations. As Pyongyang steps up its nuclear and missile programs, Seoul must reaffirm to the international community that it will continue its efforts to denuclearise the North. At the same time, relations between the two Koreas must be improved to strengthen South Korea’s strategic position in the region as well as reduce tensions on the peninsula.

Trump has been sending out confusing messages probably because he has no suitable plan to deal with Pyongyang. As such, if Seoul were to bring to the table a persuasive policy of engagement, Washington would be receptive unless it weakens US efforts towards denuclearisation. Both Beijing (pressured by Washington to solve the North Korean nuclear issue) and Pyongyang (concerned about becoming overly dependent on China) would welcome Seoul taking the initiative to improve inter-Korean relations.

Some pundits at home and abroad worry that the Moon administration might follow in the footsteps of the Roh administration (2003–2008), whose outcomes lagged too far behind its good will to bring about reform. Moon served as Roh’s chief of staff and the two administrations overlap in manpower. But Moon and his team have also learned many lessons from the trial and error of the Roh administration, preparing themselves over the past ten years of conservative rule.

With the new administration in place, political turmoil over the last six months has finally ended. Moon’s first moves as president, including key appointments in the Blue House and opening up communication channels with the public, have been well received. A public poll conducted by Gallup Korea one week after the inauguration showed that 87 percent of the respondents expected him to do well. Despite mounting challenges, South Koreans remain hopeful that their new leader can take the nation to the next level.

This piece was originally carried by East Asia Forum on May 23, 2017, and reposted with permission.

"If the threat posed by North Korea’s nuclear weapons were easy to solve, the problem would have been solved long ago. In addressing the threat from North Korea, a very real threat in which the North Korean’s could develop ICBMs that could deliver nuclear weapons to the American mainland, the United States must confront two very difficult challenges," explains Stephen Krasner in the Lawfare. Read the whole article here. 

Japan is an increasingly divided country between elites and the public as it grapples with whether it should acquire nuclear weapons itself and not rely on America’s protection, a Stanford scholar found.

Sayuri Romei, a political scientist and predoctoral fellow at Stanford’s Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC), has a new working paper that describes how Japanese society is grappling with its nuclear future. Romei researches the U.S.-Japan relationship, nuclear security, nationalism and identity in East Asia.

“The shift in the Japanese nuclear debate at the turn of the 21st century did not stem directly from a willingness to deter the new and urgent looming military threats, but was rather the result of a very limited security role that collapsed after the end of the Cold War, and took the shape of a disoriented and shaky Japanese identity,” she wrote.

Japan, a country that suffered two nuclear bombs in WWII, has a well-justified historical “nuclear allergy” that long restrained nuclear weapons ambitions, Romei said. But today, internal questions about Japan’s national sense of identity is causing elites to reconsider the nuclear military option.

She said it’s true that the tone in that debate has been changing in recent years as Japan’s security landscape changes – North Korea and China are building up their nuclear and conventional military programs. On top of this, when the Cold War ended in 1991, the “nuclear umbrella” that the U.S. afforded Japan became “theoretically less justified in an evolving security context,” as Romei describes it. Japan, in turn, sought reassurance from the U.S. that it would not abandon her.

Rethinking Japan's security

Yet the turn of the 21^st century is hardly the first time that Japanese elites have discussed a nuclear option, or that they have felt a sense of mistrust towards their ally, she said. Rather than a break from the past, Japanese elites’ behavior suggests a continuity in their thinking:

“It would therefore be more correct to talk of a renaissance of the nuclear debate, rather than an erosion of the nuclear taboo,” Romei said.

What is new in today’s nuclear statements, however, is the increasing intertwining between rethinking security identity issues, a rising nationalism, and a more challenging regional environment, she said.

Along with the necessity to rethink Japan’s security arrangement, pre-WWII nostalgia and nationalism have been growing in Japan as Prime Minister Shinzō Abe's constitutional reforms are being enacted, Romei said. And so, some top officials are reevaluating Japan's nuclear policy in favor of a more self-sufficient approach that fits their increasingly nationalist mood.

“The line between the rethinking of a Japanese security identity and pushing a nationalist agenda into the current nuclear policy is very thin,” wrote Romei.

No longer do Japanese nationalists wish to be perceived as the “faithful dog” in the U.S-Japan alliance, as they resent the “lack of a healthy postwar nationalism,” she said. Restarting some of the country’s nuclear power plants after the Fukushima Daiichi accident was even described by one leading Japanese politician as the first step toward the country acquiring nuclear weapons of its own, she added.

Though some Japanese scholars argue that Japan has been preparing for the acquisition of nuclear weapons since the end of WWII, Romei said that the link between the two sides of the nuclear coin was never really visible in Japan: indeed, the government has historically succeeded in making a sharp distinction between nuclear power for peaceful vs. military purposes.

‘Still very sensitive’

One well-known trait of Japan’s nuclear history is that Japan has a strong popular peace and anti-nuclear movement with public opinion polls set against acquiring nuclear weapons, Romei said. Peace, security, and nuclear matters are in fact deeply linked in postwar Japanese history.

“The constant and consistent work of peace associations and the massive organized demonstrations against Prime Minister Abe’s security reform plans that took place across Japan during the entire summer in 2015 are a relevant sign that public opinion is still very sensitive to a change of pace,” she wrote.

But public opinion and elite opinion “do not speak the same language and are heading in different directions,” she wrote. Elites – political  and  thought leaders, for example – continue to allude to a nuclear option for Japan to defend itself unilaterally, with or without the American nuclear umbrella.

“This sudden proliferation of nuclear statements among Japanese elites  in 2002 has been directly linked by Japan watchers to the break out of the second North Korean nuclear crisis and the rapid buildup of China’s military capabilities,” Romei said.

Trusting America?

But those external threats, she said, are actually used as a “pretext to solve a more deep-rooted and long-standing anxiety that stems from Japan’s own unsuccessful quest for a less reactive, and more proactive post-Cold War identity,” Romei noted.

The level of trust that Japanese elites feel towards their American ally is an important leitmotiv in the country’s nuclear debate, she said.

While during the Cold War U.S. credibility was mainly linked to Japan’s limited role as an ally in a bipolar era, after the collapse of this system Japanese elites slowly began their quest for a new identity, thus questioning and changing the meaning of the U.S.-Japan alliance, Roemi said. Furthermore, the first decade of the 21^st century brought about a new nationalist layer that complicates the issue of trust in the ally by adding a populist tone to the domestic nuclear debate.

Romei believes that if the gap in elite-public opinion continues to widen, Japan’s longstanding “nuclear allergy” could be overwhelmed as the government – not necessarily by design – gradually creates the political and cultural conditions that seemingly justify building nuclear weapons, Romei said.

“The turn of the century brought a new strategic environment in which Japan was forced to question its own post-Cold War identity, without eventually succeeding in an actual change,” she wrote.

Romei urges a careful monitoring of Japan’s nuclear debate moving forward – the major political shift in the U.S. caused by the November 2016 presidential elections is a key reason. America’s future political direction will ultimately affect Japan’s sense of identity by easing the questioning of the U.S.-Japan security arrangement.

While the study of the Japanese nuclear debate cannot necessarily offer a prediction of the country’s future nuclear policy choices, it can serve as an important tool to gauge the evolution of Japan’s own perception of its role in the current world order, she said.

Romei is a nuclear security predoctoral fellow at CISAC for 2016-2017 and a doctoral candidate in international relations at Roma Tre University in Rome, Italy. Her dissertation focuses on the relationship between Japan’s nuclear mentality and its identity evolution in the post-WWII era. 

MEDIA CONTACTS:

Sayuri Romei, Center for International Security and Cooperation: (650) 725-5364, sromei@stanford.edu

Clifton B. Parker, Center for International Security and Cooperation: (650) 725-6488, cbparker@stanford.edu

(Amy Zegart, co-director of the Center for International Security and Cooperation, wrote the following essay for The Atlantic.)

Today The Washington Post dropped the bombshell that President Trump had revealed classified information about the Islamic State to Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak when the three of them met at the White House last week. You know a story is big when it gets as many concurrent visitors as the story about the infamous Access Hollywood video. There was no hiding near bushes in the dark this time to walk back the damage. Deputy National-Security Advisor Dina Powell declared the story “false,” and the administration also called out the big guns, with Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster dutifully rushing into the breach to discuss the breach, using oh-so-carefully worded statements about how the president did not reveal “sources or methods” or any “military operations” that were not already known publicly.

So just how bad is the damage? On a scale of 1 to 10—and I’m just ball parking here—it’s about a billion. The story, which has since been confirmed by The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Reuters, Buzzfeed, and CNN, notes that the president could have jeopardized a critical source of intelligence on the Islamic State. Not America’s source. Somebody else’s. Presumably from an allied intelligence service who now knows that the American president cannot be trusted with sensitive information.

The type of information Trump cavalierly shared fell under a classification known as “code word,” according to the Post. There are three basic levels of classified information. Confidential information is defined as anything that could reasonably be expected to “cause damage” to American national security if shared without authorization. Secret information is one step up, considered to have the potential to cause “serious damage” if revealed. Top Secret information is a higher classification level still, comprising anything that could reasonably be expected to cause “exceptionally grave damage” to U.S. national security if revealed.

Code word is beyond Top Secret. It limits access to classified information to a much narrower pool of people to provide an extra layer of security. Many secrets are super-secrets—Harry Truman, as vice president, didn’t know about the Manhattan project. He learned of it only after Franklin Delano Roosevelt died and Truman was sworn in as president. Code word classification is so far off the scale, even fake spies rarely refer to it in the movies. Technically, the president can "declassify" anything he wants, so he did not violate any laws. But as Lawfare notes, if the president tweeted out the nuclear codes, he also wouldn't violate the law—but he would rightly be considered unfit for office.

Did Trump reveal intelligence crown jewels or just boast about the fact that he liked diamonds? According to the Post he revealed information about a purported ISIS plot involving laptops. It’s likely, however, that Tillerson, McMaster, the Postand the Times are ALL correct: The president did not reveal sources or methods or military operations. But that doesn’t matter much if he gave away information that will enable the Russians to identify the source or the methods. It looks like he did, since according to the Post’s account he talked about the content of a specific plot, the potential harm, and the location of the city in the Islamic State’s territory where the allied state’s intelligence service detected it. It was almost everything except the GPS coordinates. The denials by Tillerson and McMaster are a classic case of intelligence super-parsing—saying things that are technically and narrowly true but may not be accurate at all. No spin can hide the fact that the breach was deadly serious and reckless in the extreme.

Then there’s the impact on America’s unnamed ally, whom the Post reported was already nervous about sharing such sensitive intelligence with the United States. It is difficult to penetrate the Islamic State, and there is a major risk that this breach will close down a vital source. It’s an even bigger deal in the big picture, potentially jeopardizing intelligence cooperation with other U.S. allies around the world. Trump already raised intelligence eyebrows when he turned his Mar-a-Lago dining area into an impromptu Situation Room after the North Koreans decided to launch a ballistic missile. The president and his aides used the lights on cell phones to illuminate field reports, in full view of resort dinner guests snapping photos. If you’re known as someone who cannot keep a secret, the world’s secret-keepers are not going to tell you much.

“Can you believe the world we live in today?” President Trump said, according to one official in the two Sergeis meeting. “Isn’t it crazy?”

Yes, Mr. President. It’s crazy.

Researchers urge Moon Jae-in to form a close working relationship with Donald Trump and to establish a new special envoy role for North Korea policy emulating the “Perry Process”

Researchers from the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (APARC) said they are optimistic about the election of South Korean president Moon Jae-in who assumed office last week following waves of protest across the country.

Now that the vacancy left in the wake of former President Park Geun-hye’s impeachment has been filled, the South Korean government needs to work to strengthen bilateral relations with the United States amid escalating tensions in Northeast Asia, they said.

The Moon administration should immediately engage U.S. President Donald Trump and his senior staff at the White House and government agencies, said Kathleen Stephens, the William J. Perry Fellow at Shorenstein APARC.

“Moon would do well to establish a personal relationship with Trump,” said Stephens, who was U.S. ambassador to South Korea from 2008 to 2011. “The new administration must set up a meeting as early as possible and be ready to engage on a range of issues.”

“In a sense, Moon has to play catch-up,” said Shorenstein APARC Director Gi-Wook Shin, who noted that Trump already held in-person meetings with other Asian heads of state in the United States, including summits with Chinese President Xi Jinping and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.

Shin added that a coherent U.S. strategy toward Asia and senior staff appointments in the State and Defense Departments would also aid in supporting the foundation upon which the South Korean and American governments work together on policy challenges, especially North Korea.

North Korea’s nuclear and missile capabilities have become more and more advanced over the past few months, and provocations have continued to ratchet up, including its firing of a ballistic missile that landed in the sea near Russia on Sunday and repeat threats to conduct a sixth nuclear test.

The Moon administration must focus on establishing trust and cooperation with the Trump administration because it is the only pathway to finding a resolution to North Korea’s program, said Siegfried Hecker, a senior fellow at the Center for International Security and Cooperation, an additional center in the Freeman Spogli Institute.

“Any solution must be compatible with the interests of Seoul, but it has to be done in concert with Washington to get Pyongyang’s attention,” said Hecker, who served as director of the Los Alamos National Laboratory and has traveled to North Korea seven times since 2004 to survey its nuclear facilities.

During the campaign, Moon repeatedly spoke of his proposals to reengage the North Korean regime, such as holding talks with its leader Kim Jong-un and re-opening Kaesong Industrial Complex, a joint economic zone on the North Korean side of the border.

Stephens and Shin said Moon’s proposals for North Korean engagement would be a step in the right direction if pursued in due time and led under the direction of a special envoy from South Korea emulating the American “Perry Process.”

The Perry Process, proposed by former U.S. Secretary of Defense William Perry and implemented in the late 1990s under the Clinton administration, entails the appointment of a senior-level, bipartisan representative to pursue a two-track approach of engagement through joint projects and of continued dialogue on denuclearization with North Korea.

Appointing one person in South Korea to lead North Korea policy would help centralize and streamline its organization, which currently requires coordination of activities across dozens of government agencies, the two researchers noted.

“We recognize that establishing such a position and filling the position would be far from easy,” said Shin, co-author of the study Tailored Engagement. “But the magnitude of the nuclear crisis requires restructuring the way in which the South Korean government deals with North Korea, achieving domestic consensus, and shoring up international support for its efforts.”

The United States, China, Japan and Russia are the key international countries concerned with the peace and stability of Northeast Asia, yet South Korea has both an acute need and the potential to assume greater leadership of North Korea policy, said Shorenstein APARC Fellow Thomas Fingar.

China, as North Korea’s largest trade partner, exercises influence over North Korea by maintaining a commercial relationship in the hope of avoiding a collapse of the regime. Yet, its leverage only goes so far, he added.

The Moon administration should consider the limits of Chinese influence before making policy decisions regarding North Korea, Fingar said, for example, whether to freeze or remove the U.S. anti-ballistic missile system, Thermal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD), deployed last April in South Korea, which the Chinese government strongly opposed.

“There is little that Beijing can or will do that would persuade Pyongyang to be more receptive to initiatives from Seoul than it would otherwise be,” said Fingar, a China specialist who served as chairman of the U.S. National Intelligence Council. “Seoul should not ‘pay’ much to obtain Chinese assistance because China already supports reengagement and would not do more no matter what Seoul offered as an inducement.”

It is of vital importance the Moon administration seeks to strengthen trilateral cooperation between South Korea, Japan and the United States, and to consider holding a summit to address areas of collaboration, all of which would function alongside the China-Japan-South Korea trilateral structure toward creating stability in the region, according to Daniel Sneider, associate director for research at Shorenstein APARC.

“Such cooperation is essential to the security of the region – without it, the United States cannot fulfill its obligation to defend South Korea against the threat posed by North Korea,” said Sneider, who leads the Divided Memories and Reconciliation research project. “Moreover, it’s in the interest of all three countries to tighten such cooperation to balance the rise of China.”

The Moon administration should, above all else, take time to consider its first steps despite pressures to perform early, said Michael Armacost, a fellow at Shorenstein APARC who held a 24-year career in the U.S. government.

“Getting things right is more important than making a quick splash,” said Armacost, a former U.S. undersecretary of state for political affairs. “I would advise any new president to proceed at a deliberate pace, focusing particularly on the key personal issues first, and consulting widely before enunciating major policy departures.”

Related links:

South Korea's election: Shorenstein APARC scholars offer insight

Yonhap News: 미 한반도 전문가 그룹 "한국형 페리 프로세스 필요" (May 16, 2017)

VOA: 미 전문가들 "한국 정부, 미국과 북 핵 협력 중요...대북특사도 임명해야" (May 17, 2017)

Moon Jae-in was elected South Korea’s president on a pledge to address domestic inequality and to renew dialogue with North Korea. In the midst of Tuesday’s vote, Shorenstein APARC scholars offered insight to local and international media outlets.

Gi-Wook Shin, professor of sociology and director of Shorenstein APARC’s Korea Program, provided comment to The Economist about the challenges facing an administration led by Moon, a progressive candidate who is assuming power when an active conservative camp remains. He is also cited in an article in the New York Times focused on Moon's economic agenda and featured in a video from a Korea Society event that examines next steps for the new president.

Rennie Moon, the Koret Fellow in the Korea Program, co-authored an analysis piece on the East Asia Forum with Shin analyzing recent polls and the Moon administration's economic and security agenda.

Daniel Sneider, associate director for research at Shorenstein APARC, wrote an analysis piece for The National Bureau of Asian Research. In the piece, he explores how the election could impact the U.S.-Republic of Korea alliance amid escalating tensions on the Korean Peninsula.

Kathleen Stephens, the William J. Perry Fellow at Shorenstein APARC, appeared in a live interview on CNBC. In the taping, she discusses the significance of the vote and the new administration’s priorities as Moon swiftly takes office following the removal of his predecessor.