Noting the universally negative coverage that he garners from the national media, Donald Trump recently declared that he loves “regional media.” At this point, he probably loves South Korean media as well.
With its rapidly aging population, print newspapers in Korea retain the influence they’ve largely lost here in the United States. (To put it in Trumpian parlance, they’re not #failing.) So they represent a good barometer for how the public at large will have Trump’s visit interpreted for them. And the largely conservative South Korean press is exulting over Trump’s just concluded visit to Seoul.
Chosun Ilbo, the country’s largest newspaper, praised Trump’s “tough attitude” toward North Korea and noted that the president made a strong moral case against the regime in Pyongyang. It’s not just that North Korea is in possession of nuclear weapons: It’s that it’s a fundamentally evil regime, Trump argued in a landmark speech to the National Assembly. An editorial in the same newspaper also praised Trump’s “strong message” to North Korea. Joongang Ilbo, another leading daily, was perhaps even more lavish in its praise. It called Trump’s speech at the National Assembly “eloquent,” and reported that it spurred 22 rounds of applause and two standing ovations.
South Korean officials had been trepidatious about Trump’s visit. For one, the president had appeared to snub Korea by spending two nights in Tokyo, but only one in Seoul. The Koreans had their revenge though, first by serving Trump shrimp caught near a disputed set of rocks that lie between Korea and Japan, and then by introducing him to a former comfort woman, who had been sexually enslaved by Japanese imperial forces. (Giving the lie to their rote expressions of “remorse,” the Japanese government complained about Trump’s meeting a comfort woman. Imagine the German government carping when a U.S. president meets a Holocaust survivor.)
Koreans were also worried that Trump would raise the free trade agreement between Seoul and Washington during his National Assembly speech. Besides a few vague allusions to it, that didn’t happen. So while pundits 7,000 miles away issued petty complaints, our close allies on the front lines of the North Korean menace seem pretty darn pleased with how the visit went.
