Seoul Village Season XIX

At long last, Korea's miserable month of December 2024 is over. You'd think it'd be hard to top two presidential impeachments sandwiched between two major disasters (YOON Suk-yeol's short-lived martial law and Jeju Air's tragic plane crash), but 2025 doesn't bode very well either for a nation on the ropes. 

Whoever is the next president will have a hard time rebuilding hope and trust at home as well as overseas, provided that's on their menu.

In the short term, acting president CHOI Sang-mok is unlikely to achieve anything significant and until the elections at least, the opposition is unlikely to contribute to reviving an anemic economy it's been undermining for years. As for the long term. this Dark December most probably annihilated that recent, timid demographic uptick (belated COVID rebound?) as radically as those politically motivated budget cuts sacrificing Korea's future growth engines (goodbye innovation and quantum computing).

Korea's competitive edge and survival are also at risk with the return of Trump to the White House.

In the 1991 blockbuster Terminator 2: Judgement Day, Arnold Schwarzenegger returned as a force of good in total contrast with a first opus where he pretty much destroyed everything. But that's fiction and in Trump's T2, The Donald is unlikely to fundamentally change characters. Actually, DJT already hired 'Dark MAGA' Elon Musk for the role of Robert Patrick: T-!000, a fitter, slicker, updated version of the bulletproof killing machine programmed to help Skynet / Space X control the World. Anyway, doomsday scenario or not, this sequel promises to be less boring than Kamala Harris' short-lived B2: Statu Quo.

Both sides of the DMZ are watching closely.

KIM Jong-un knows he can't trust Trump, and he's already busy with another transactional buddy, Vladimir Putin. With his 'Juche Line' and 'Sunshine Line' in tatters, KIM somehow balances the 'Beijing Line' with a 'Kremlin Line' that provides oil, currencies, and statesman credentials against disposables (weapons and cannon fodder). 

Whoever is in charge in Seoul, lines will change and the US military presence of South Korea will be reevaluated by a man who already proved he could betray and abandon brothers in arms (ask the Kurds and Afghans if they believe one second Trump's commitment to Koreans is ironclad). We know Trump wants to withdraw, and that Mike Pompeo advised him (as Mark Esper revealed) to delay such a risky move to his second term. We know that this time he'll be surrounded by incompetent yes-men in the White House and in a greater section of Congress. We also know that Marco Rubio wouldn't be okay with abandoning Asia to China, but that he won't be calling the shots...

Should LEE Jae-myeong become the next president, he could even accelerate the withdrawal process. And he certainly wouldn't compensate with a NATO style alliance with Japan and Taiwan, like the one floated here and there as a second Trump mandate looked inevitable.

But LEE himself is a very transactional guy, and he could sing Trump a different kind of serenade than the one YOON sang to Biden. 

Besides, Korea Inc have more than a few chips on the table. Samsung, SK Hynix and Co. also fear another kind of withdrawal: the subsidies guaranteed under Joe Bden's CHIPS act. CHEY Tae-won already warned SK might reconsider its massive investment in Indiana, where both senators are Republicans... like in Texas, where Samsung extends its Austin plant and builds a new one in Taylor...

At worst very conflictual, at best very transactional, this year of the blue snake looks pretty sneaky. 

Nonetheless, let's wish ourselves a happy new year 2025.

"#Trump returns. To #KyoboBookstore, #Seoul:" (20241129 post by Seoul Village on Bluesky)

Seoul Village 2025
Welcome to our Korean Errlines! Follow Seoul Village on Facebook, Bluesky, and X/Twitter, follow me on Instagram.
Download 'Seoul VillageS', the free ebook (12 fictions, now adapted into short films!)

Trump: The Art of the Dealapidation (Exclusive Interview)

Seoul Village: 'Mr President, Welcome to our Korean Errlines'

Donald J. Trump: 'Thanks for having me. I must confess that I was a bit jealous of KIM Jong-un - you already interviewed him three times*'.
 
SV: 'You seem to envy a lot of things from dictators'
 
DJT: 'Look, the whole people of North Korea is forced to love KIM, to attend his inaugurations, to vote for him, to worship him. All the media are compelled to praise him. He doesn't have to worry about laws, human right or justice... I'm great, but I'm not sure I would be able to achieve that before my third term.'
 
SV: 'And he's not even half your age'.
 
DJT: 'Isn't that awesome? This young lad is so talented, he can even ride horses like a stable genius. No wonder we have such a terrific relationship.'

SV: 'We're talking about a cruel dictator, a torturer who murdered even people from his own family.'
 
DJT: 'I know, I'm still a bit weak..., but I'm working on it! And if Robert Mueller manages to have Don Jr flip on me, I won't hesitate to sic my mob friends at both.'
 
SV 'That's the spirit. And speaking of spirits, how could you get so friendly with KIM without boozing along? You don't drink a drop of alcohol'. 

DJT 'We binged on junk food, and you know I don't need to drink to embarrass myself. Plus we were both so high on ourselves... We spent our time boasting about our private resorts, and I showed him my Big Button, the interior of The Beast...'
 
SV 'That's your armored limo.'
 
DJT 'Right. I refurbished it completely with Trump gold, and portraits of the Trump dynasty: me, myself, and I. He didn't show me his set of wheels, but he got his bodyguards run a marathon around it while we chatted. I loved it so much, I asked Jim Mattis to add this stunt to our next military parade.'
 
SV 'So your Singapore Summit was a perfect honeymoon, yet there's a debate about the deal you made.'
 
DJT 'I know, I know, I basically agreed with everything Jong-un asked, I torpedoed our joint drills with South Korea, and to make things worse I said that my threats of last year were just rethoric, so that he doesn't feel any pressure anymore. Anyway as soon as I agreed to meet him, I opened the door to Xi Jinping, who already eased the sanctions, and guaranteed Little Rocket Man he had his back - Oops, I'd better save this nickname for when he turns bad again.'
 
SV 'You are taking a lot of risks. You insisted on playing it on your gut feeling, so if or rather when KIM betrays you, you will own it 100%.'
 
DJT 'Absolutely impossible: the buck never stops here, remember? I already said that if he betrays me, I won't apologize, but find excuses. As usual, I'll blame Obama, Hillary, Comey, the Democrats, the deep state, CNN, Hillary, China, the Swamp, or maybe, for a change, Hillary.'

'Take me to your leader' 20180606 (Dennis Rodman lands in Singapore for the Trump-Kim Summit)

SV 'This deal is not only a textbook case of terrible negotiation, but also very bad for America'.
 
DJT 'First, I've never been good at deals, and actually I didn't write 'The Art of the Deal' myself. Haven't you noticed that everything I do goes morally and financially bankrupt. Me? I only know how to bully people, and when they are women to grab them by the...'
 
SV '... I get your first point. And the second one?'
 
DJT 'Of course I know it's bad for America. Why do you think Putin chose me? Do you really believe I'm putting America First? It's always been all bout me. In order to exist, I need to re-create the World everyday in the image of myself, each time while making big splashes on prime time. What I always do is first criticizing things as the worst that ever existed, then promising deals better than anything that existed before, then destroying everything without proposing a solution, then seeing what happens, and then accusing others it it fails. And behold, it was very good'.
 
SV 'Amen to that. But in the case of North Korea, you're breaking things that are highly radioactive... Should South Korea and Japan worry?'
 
DJT 'I don't care about them, but MOON Jae-in has been on cloud nine ever since he stopped my 'bloody nose' plans, and Shinzo Abe, who like me adores fellow strongmen, is already planning a trip to Pyongyang. Anyway I told you: North Korea is no longer a nuclear threat. Won't happen! Now please give me my Nobel Peace Prize.'
 
SV 'Not so fast. You know this deal can't work.'
 
DJT 'Of course it can't. That's why I asked Mike Pompeo to tell Jong-un to take his time, and just do something nice a few weeks before each of my reelections, starting in 2020.'
 
SV 'How about this year's Midterms?'
 
DJT 'These don't count as elections: I'm not on the ballot'

The Groundsparing Declaration - 20180612

Seoul Village 2018
Welcome to our Korean Errlines! Follow Seoul Village on Facebook and Twitter

Add this page to your favorites

* see "Exclusive interview with KIM Jong-un - Season III" (March 2018), "EXCLUSIVE-Second interview with KIM Jong-un" (February 2017), "Exclusive interview with KIM Jong-un" (December 2013) - all fake, like this one of course!

---
(from SeoulVillage on Twitter):
#TrumpKimSummit - never a dud moment?