Analysts predict that South Korea’s next president will be tough on the nuclear-armed North, threatening a pre-emptive strike, responding quickly to missile tests, and telling “rude boy” leader Kim Jong Un to behave.
For the last five years, Seoul has pursued an engagement policy with Pyongyang, mediating high-level summits between Kim and then-US President Donald Trump while reducing joint US military drills that the North considers provocative.
This “subservient” approach has been a glaring failure for President-elect Yoon Suk-yeol, who won a close election by a razor-thin margin on Thursday.
Yoon said in a pre-election Facebook post that President Moon Jae-administration in’s “volunteered to play middleman between the US and North Korea but was dumped by both in the end.”
Pyongyang has conducted nine weapons tests since the beginning of the year, including prohibited hypersonic and medium-range ballistic missiles.
Yoon, 61, said the North needed to be taken in hand after it test-fired what it claimed was a reconnaissance satellite component Saturday – Seoul said it was a disguised ballistic missile.
“Give me a chance, and I’ll teach him some manners,” he promised.
On the campaign trail, he called Kim a “rude boy” and promised that once in power, he would “snap out of it” North Korea’s leader.
The former prosecutor has threatened to launch a pre-emptive strike on North Korea “if necessary,” which analysts say is both unrealistic and dangerous.
Nonetheless, in his first remarks as president-elect, Yoon vowed Thursday to “curtly deal with the North’s illegal and irrational acts.”
Reestablish relationships
“Under Yoon, we’ll possibly see efforts to reset inter-Korean relations,” RAND Corporation’s Soo Kim told AFP.
Yoon, she said, will take a tougher stance instead of dialogue and engagement, and has already called for more joint drills with the US.
“It is, to say the least, a departure from the Moon administration’s prioritization of inter-Korean engagement,” she added.
“There is nothing to gain.”
President Moon met with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un four times and facilitated high-level talks between Pyongyang and Washington.
However, negotiations broke down in 2019, and diplomacy has stalled as Pyongyang has increased weapons testing and threatened to abandon a self-imposed moratorium on a long-range missile and nuclear weapon testing.
Yoon has not ruled out dialogue with Pyongyang, but analysts say his hawkish stance puts him on a completely different footing and reduces the prospect of substantive engagement significantly.
