In the end, self-interest defeated collective interest. The South Korean presidential election, which concluded Tuesday, featured one strong left-wing candidate, Moon Jae-in, and three credible centrist-to-conservative contenders. (Notably, all three of the center-right candidates professed hard lines on North Korea.) Had any two of the center to center-right candidates dropped out and thrown their weight behind the other, they could have defeated Moon. But it didn’t happen: And so Moon Jae-in has won the South Korean presidential election, with only 41.4 percent of the vote. Right-wing candidate Hong Joon-pyo, who called himself a “strongman” and had some, um, retrograde views on gender relations, took 23.3 percent. Centrist Ahn Cheol-soo grabbed 21.8 percent. The third was weaker, and managed only 6 percent. (Note: These numbers are shifting slightly as the returns come in.) You’ll note that the votes for the top two center and center right candidates alone bested Moon Jae-in’s winning tally.
So Moon has risen without much of a mandate. And his performance looks weaker still when one considers that the leading opposition party is in utter disgrace as a result of a corruption scandal that led to the impeachment of President Park Geun-hye. So while he’ll have strong support for much of his domestic agenda—particularly taming the chaebol, the massive conglomerates that dominate South Korea’s economy—it’s not clear that he will have much public support elsewhere.
That said, Moon has made it clear that he’ll pursue a friendlier course towards North Korea than his immediate predecessors did. (Here’s an ominous sign: The Guardian calls him a “pragmatist.”) Moon has said he’s eager to travel to Pyongyang to meet North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un —suggesting, at one point, he’d like to visit North Korea before the United States—and even re-open the Kaesong joint industrial complex, a ridiculous facility where South Korean companies employ North Korean laborers to build products. Kaesong was a financial boon to the North Korean regime, and was shuttered by President Park. But Moon wants to re-open the spigot, flooding Pyongyang with cash to fund its missile and nuclear programs, and keep the gulag humming.
All of this sets up something of a conflict between South Korea and its stalwart ally, the United States. The Trump administration is pressuring other countries to crack down on North Korea, just as South Korea has elected a president who wants to do just the opposite. And President Trump has not made many friends in Korea since his inauguration, particularly by suggesting that Seoul should foot the bill for THAAD, the U.S. missile defense system that was recently installed there. (Moon, for his part, has said he’d like to reevaluate THAAD’s deployment, perhaps a rare agreement he can find with Trump.)
Meanwhile, expect North Korea to keep pushing. Several sources in the South Korean government suggested to me last month that the reason that Kim Jong-un did not test a nuclear weapon around the time of his grandfather’s birthday in April—as was widely expected—was to help Moon’s chances of taking the presidency. Now that that’s happened, expect both fireworks at Moon’s victory party—and, perhaps, fireworks of a different kind north of the 38th parallel.
