by WorldTribune Staff, March 13, 2025 Real World News
The “Donald Trump of Asia” could use some help from the Donald Trump, an analysis said.
Since he was elected in May of 2022, South Korean President Yoon Suk-Yeol has been under constant attack from leftist opposition Democratic Party (DP), which “has done everything possible to obstruct and destroy him including via its commanding majority in the National Assembly — a majority that was also quite possibly achieved via election fraud,” Grant Newsham wrote for The Sunday Guardian on March 9.
In his statement announcing and justifying martial law on Dec. 3, 2024, Yoon warned of North Korean supporters in the opposition.
“He’s right,” Newsham wrote. “A sizable chunk of South Korea’s Democratic Party and leftist political world is pro-North Korea and also pro-China. And they are also anti-American and want to remove U.S. troops and end the U.S.-South Korea alliance.”
Led by opposition leader Lee Jae-Myung, the leftists have blocked Yoon’s policies at every turn, slashed or zeroed out his budgets, and tried to impeach Yoon or his officials — including the Ministers of Justice and Interior — at least 22 times since he took office.
“Even Yoon’s wife is being targeted on corruption charges,” Newsham noted. “This goes well beyond South Korea’s normal sharp-elbowed politics.”
Yoon was arrested six weeks after declaring martial law and was ordered released after five weeks in prison while South Korea’s constitutional court decides his fate.
“The make-up of the constitutional court is akin to a Republican being tried in either the overwhelmingly Democrat District of Columbia or New York — and predictably the court has hampered Yoon’s defense,” Newsham noted.
Related: Washington Post profiles CCP-backed leader in Seoul as pro-Yoon protests continue, February 23, 2025
Yoon was charged with “insurrection.”
If there is anyone who understands Yoon’s situation, it’s U.S. President Donald Trump.
“A properly worded statement or two from Washington, and from President Trump himself, in support of consensual, honest government and individual liberty in South Korea — to include fair, honest elections as much in South Korea as in the United States — would be helpful,” Newsham wrote.
“This would encourage South Korean citizens who are defending their democracy and also let the other side know they are being watched. Sometimes this alone is an effective deterrent.”
Most South Korean citizens don’t want to be ruled by China, North Korea, or a North Korean-like system. They also support the U.S.-South Korea alliance.
“But that doesn’t matter much when a coterie of hardcore radicals (Marxist or otherwise) are able to take over a government and move a country where most people don’t want it to go,” Newsham wrote.
It has happened before.
Venezuela was a longstanding U.S. ally and Latin America’s oldest democracy until socialist Hugo Chavez “won an election and gradually tightened control over enough levers of power to the point that neither elections nor opposition political parties mattered much. Freedom was snuffed out and the U.S. declared an enemy,” Newsham wrote.
“Don’t think it can’t happen in South Korea — despite a 70-plus-year alliance ‘forged in the blood of the Korean War.’ ”
Newsham added: “Washington is counting on South Korea cooperating with Japan to consolidate free-world defenses in Northeast Asia and acting as bulwark for a free, open and prosperous Indo-Pacific — something Beijing would like to torpedo. The U.S. also wants help with rebuilding American shipbuilding.”
In 1950, U.S. Secretary of State Dean Acheson used a speech to draw a line in East Asia laying out the American defensive perimeter to prevent the spread of communism. It ran through the main islands of Japan, Okinawa and the Philippines but excluded South Korea and Taiwan. It was called the “Acheson Line.”
Months later, North Korea launched a military offensive across the 38th parallel, starting the Korean War.
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SOS from the ‘Donald Trump of Asia’; The ‘Acheson Line’ and the start of the Korean War added by Editor Two on
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