Conservative Yoon Suk-yeol Wins the South Korean Presidency
Written by: Trystanto
On March 10, 2022, Yoon Suk-yeol won the 2022 South Korean presidential election. The heavily-fought campaign of Yoon managed to win 48% of the vote — just one percent higher than his opponent, Lee Jae-myung (Al-Jazeera 2022). The difference of the vote tally between the winner and the loser reflects the highly-fought nature of the 2022 presidential election.
Yoon Suk-yeol campaigned on a conservative platform, in contrast to his opponent that comes from the party of the incumbent president, Moon Jae-in. Yoon has blamed the feminist movement for their perceived role in reducing the South Korean birthrate, which is one of the worst in the world (BBC News 2022a). One of his campaign pledges was to disband the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family (Ibid). This campaign pledge should not be seen as surprising given that a survey by a local South Korean newspaper showed that 79% of South Korean men felt that they are discriminated against (quoted in BBC News 2022b). That is the reason the BBC labelled that “…misogyny is at the heart of South Korea’s presidential elections” (Ibid).
On the matters of foreign policy, Yoon Suk-yeol is more hawkish compared to the liberal incumbent Moon Jae-in. He criticized President Moon that dialogue with North Korea “has become an end in itself” instead of using it as a mean to achieve the denuclearization of North Korea (Yoon 2022). More ominously, he criticized President Moon for caving in to Chinese demands to dismantle the THAAD missile defense system in 2017 after Chinese economic coercion. In his own words, “Like [other] countries, South Korea has faced Chinese economic retaliation. Unlike them, however, South Korea has succumbed to Chinese economic retaliation at the expense of its own security interests” (Ibid). To counter future Chinese economic coercion designed to prevent Seoul from taking security measures, Yoon believes that “such differences should not get in the way of economic issues” (Ibid). Therefore, it seems that Yoon wants to compartmentalize and isolate economic and security matters with China so that disruptions in one does not affect the other.
It is, however, unclear whether this will work. In recent years, it is increasingly clear that China intends to use all of the available instrument available at its disposal to pursue its foreign policy objectives, regardless of whether such instrument will disrupt the broader bilateral relations. For example, Erickson and Collins (2021, p.137) argue that Beijing will not “not compartmentalize climate cooperation; its participation in efforts to slow global warming will be contingent on the positions and actions that its foreign interlocutors take in other areas.” Given that Beijing will not compartmentalize issues of grave global concern, such as climate change, it is doubtful that Beijing will be willing to compartmentalize and isolate its economic relations with South Korea. In fact, it is increasingly clear in recent years that China will double down, instead of stopping. In 2020, for example, China refused to compartmentalize and isolate its public health relations with Australia from trade and economic matters by embargoing Australian products after Australia called for an investigation into the origin of the SARS-CoV-2 virus and the COVID-19 pandemic (Wong 2021, p.44). Thus, it is far from certain that Yoon would be able to isolate economic matters from security matters of South Korea.
Other foreign policy pledges include strengthening South Korean partnership with the United States and Japan. Yoon (2022) argued that Moon Jae-in’s reluctance to confront Beijing has created a perception that South Korea is tilting away from the US and Japan and moving closer into the embrace of China. He pressed that South Korea needs to work closer with Japan and the United States and the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue — Yoon stopped short of mentioning whether South Korea will join the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, though. For South Korean relations with Japan, Yoon emphasized the importance of “rethinking” South Korean relations with Tokyo. It is however, difficult to say whether this policy of establishing a closer relationship with Japan will be successful due to the South Korean antipathy towards Japan due to the abuses perpetrated by Japan towards Koreans during the Japanese colonialization of South Korea, especially on the issue of comfort women.
Trystanto is the head of the Research and Development division of FPCI UGM. This article expresses his own views and not necessarily those of FPCI UGM
References
Al-Jazeera (2022). Conservative Outsider Elected as S Korea’s next President. [online] www.aljazeera.com. Available at: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/3/9/south-korean-opposition-candidate-yoon-wins-presidential-election [Accessed 11 Mar. 2022].
BBC News (2022a). South Korea: Conservative Candidate Yoon Suk-yeol Elected President. [online] BBC News. Available at: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-60685141 [Accessed 11 Mar. 2022].
BBC News (2022b). Why Misogyny Is at the Heart of South Korea’s Presidential Elections. BBC News. [online] 8 Mar. Available at: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-60643446 [Accessed 11 Mar. 2022].
Erickson, A.S. and Collins, G. (2021). Competition With China Can Save the Planet: Pressure, Not Partnership, Will Spur Progress on Climate Change. Foreign Affairs, 100(3), pp.136–149.
Wong, A. (2021). How Not to Win Allies and Influence Geopolitics: China’s Self-Defeating Economic Statecraft. Foreign Affairs, 100(3), pp.44–53.
Yoon, S. (2022). South Korea Needs to Step Up: The Country’s Next President on His Foreign Policy Vision. [online] Foreign Affairs. Available at: https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/south-korea/2022-02-08/south-korea-needs-step [Accessed 11 Mar. 2022].
