SEOUL, South Korea — As international governments put together to cope with a second Trump administration, a minimum of one key U.S. ally is hoping to make headway on the green.
South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol “acquired out his golf golf equipment for the primary time in eight years and resumed his golf observe” as he will get prepared to fulfill President-elect Donald Trump in particular person, his workplace instructed NBC News on Monday.
Trump famously loves the game and has golf properties in Florida, New Jersey, Virginia and elsewhere. For lawmakers, businesspeople and infrequently world leaders, getting out on the hyperlinks has been an vital method to get near him.
Yoon, whose approval score hit a file low 17% final week, additionally convened an emergency financial and safety assembly over the weekend in response to Trump’s election victory, his workplace mentioned in a textual content briefing Sunday. South Korean officers are particularly involved about Trump’s vow to impose tariffs of 20% on all U.S. imports, in addition to different calls for he might place on the nation and the overtures he might make towards its rival, North Korea.
Yoon instructed reporters final week that he had spent about 10 minutes on the telephone with Trump after his election victory and that the 2 leaders “agreed that we must always meet in particular person quickly.”
He seems to be following the playbook of Japan’s late Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, mentioned David Boling, director of Japan and Asian commerce at New York-based consulting agency Eurasia Group.
Abe, who was assassinated in 2022, had a detailed private relationship with Trump and performed golf with him a minimum of 5 occasions each within the United States and Japan, typically elevating moral issues. He additionally gifted Trump with a set of gold-plated golf golf equipment throughout a November 2016 go to to Trump Tower in New York, shortly after he was first elected president.
Abe “was terribly skillful in coping with Trump,” together with via golf, Boling mentioned in a briefing final week after the U.S. election.
“He flattered Trump, he gave him gold golf golf equipment, he nominated him for a Nobel Peace Prize,” he mentioned, including, “The factor that was outstanding to me about Abe is he was prepared to sacrifice his personal reasonably giant ego to create space and room for Trump’s huge ego.”
Yoon — who stole the present at a White House state dinner final 12 months along with his rendition of his favourite tune, “American Pie” — “might be the Abe of a Trump 2.0 administration, a minimum of from East Asia,” Jeremy Chan, a senior analyst for China and Northeast Asia at Eurasia Group, mentioned in the identical briefing.
In addition to being “constitutionally minimize from a really comparable material” as Trump, he mentioned, Yoon is “remarkably pro-American” and “very fluent” in English.
“I’ve heard Yoon doesn’t actually play a lot golf, however he’s additionally a person of many skills,” Chan mentioned. “And so he might doubtlessly learn to swing a membership or two, if that’s going to get him on the inexperienced with President Trump.”
He may have the ability to leverage Trump’s curiosity in golfers akin to Lydia Ko of New Zealand, who was born in Seoul. When Ko received gold within the girls’s particular person golf occasion on the Paris Olympics in August, Trump congratulated her and described her as “most spectacular” in a submit on his social media platform Truth Social, including that he had met her at his Trump Turnberry golf resort in Scotland.
Compared with Abe, it could be more durable going for Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba, who was voted by lawmakers to stay in workplace Monday regardless of his long-governing get together’s dismal exhibiting in parliamentary elections final month.
“Ishiba doesn’t play golf one of the best that I can inform,” Boling mentioned.
South Korea had outwardly projected calm earlier than the U.S. presidential election, saying the U.S.-South Korea relationship would stay “rock-solid” irrespective of who received.
“But a variety of that form of sanguine angle, I believe, belies actual disquiet beneath the floor” by way of safety and the economic system, Chan mentioned.
Like Japan, South Korea is more likely to face greater U.S. tariffs “or straight up simply extraordinary calls for for South Korea to buy extra U.S. items to scale back the commerce imbalance,” which has roughly doubled because the finish of Trump’s first time period, Chan mentioned.
South Korean Finance Minister Choi Sang-mok mentioned final week that the federal government would work to attenuate any hostile affect on native corporations from altering U.S. commerce insurance policies.
There are additionally issues about the way forward for the U.S.-South Korea safety alliance, after Trump accused Seoul in his first time period of not paying sufficient for the 28,500 American troops stationed in South Korea. Not lengthy after Trump left workplace, South Korea reached an settlement along with his successor, President Joe Biden, to extend its contribution by virtually 14%, the largest enhance in virtually 20 years.
Last month, the U.S. and South Korea agreed on a brand new five-year cost-sharing plan for the U.S. troops.
“They did this to get forward of potential Trump victory and to forestall one other spherical of extortionary negotiations,” Chan mentioned.
But it’s doable Trump will ask South Korea to pay nonetheless extra, Chan mentioned, and that he’ll threaten to scale back the U.S. army presence in South Korea or the 2 international locations’ joint army workout routines if it doesn’t.
Maintaining a powerful safety alliance with the U.S. is particularly vital for South Korea given the rising hostility from nuclear-armed North Korea. While Yoon takes a tough line on his northern neighbor, Trump is extensively anticipated to renew the in-person summits he held throughout his first time period with North Korean chief Kim Jong Un.
But North Korea’s nuclear and missile applications have made huge advances since Trump left workplace, Chan mentioned, and his new administration could now be ready to just accept a freeze in Pyongyang’s nuclear ambitions reasonably than its full denuclearization, primarily accepting North Korea as a nuclear state.
That in flip could lead on South Korea and even Japan to contemplate whether or not they want nuclear weapons of their very own.
“There’s just a few steps between right here and there, however that’s high of thoughts for policymakers,” Chan mentioned.
Stella Kim reported from Seoul, South Korea, and Jennifer Jett reported from Hong Kong.