-Analysis-
PARIS — After six months of political chaos, South Korea may have found some resolution with the comfortable election victory of progressive candidate Lee Jae-myung. Instability was a luxury the country could no longer afford, especially in today’s highly volatile regional and international environment.
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The crisis began when conservative President Yoon Suk Yol imposed martial law — an act immediately countered by a late-night emergency parliamentary session and mass citizen protests. Since then, the country has struggled to regain political and economic stability. Tuesday’s presidential election was meant to close this chapter, though deep divisions remain.
Now, after his easy victory, Lee takes the helm of a country shaken by six turbulent months, but facing enormous challenges that he has described as existential: those posed by its formidable neighbors, nuclear powers China and North Korea, and those posed by its main ally, Donald Trump’s United States, which has become, at the very least, unpredictable.
North Korea’s harsher stance
North Korea remains the most alarming concern. The two Koreas never signed a peace treaty following the 1953 armistice and are technically still at war. Moreover, the North, under the Kim dynasty, possesses nuclear weapons and has resumed its aggressive rhetoric toward both the South and the United States
Lee, a 61-year-old lawyer, represents a political movement long associated with the “Sunshine Policy” — a strategy of engagement with the North that has seen both progress and setbacks but never a true breakthrough. Today, his tone is much more cautious, especially as Pyongyang has hardened its stance and removed reunification from its official guiding principles.
Should South Korea develop its own nuclear arsenal?
A South Korean official also recently pointed out to me that North Korea’s involvement in the war in Ukraine was significantly changing the situation. Seoul had viewed the war in Ukraine as a distant conflict, until North Korean troops were sent to fight alongside Russia. The echoes of war have resurfaced in Korea as well.
American uncertainty
Trump’s re-election has only added to the uncertainty. His first term was marked by a surprisingly cordial relationship with North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un. Now, Trump 2.0 is not sparing Seoul from trade disputes and plans to withdraw several thousand U.S. troops from the peninsula.
Despite reassurances from Washington, South Korea faces the same dilemma as all U.S. allies: How far can one trust the American security guarantee? And a related question: If that guarantee fails, should South Korea develop its own nuclear arsenal as a deterrent against its neighbors?
When I shared these concerns with the South Korean official, along with the idea I had heard in Seoul that the country could have nuclear weapons within a few months if it decided to, he simply replied, “Yes, that’s true.” That is why it is better for South Korea to have a stable, democratically elected president: there are some explosive issues waiting for him.
