Tag: Moon Jae-in

President Moon’s approval rating is still very high at 58%, but it has dropped nearly 20 points in the past three months which has to be worrying:

President Moon Jae-in’s approval rating dipped to a record low of 58 percent, the first time the president’s popularity fell below the 60 percent level since he took office in May 2017.

In a poll conducted by Realmeter between Monday and Wednesday of 1,507 adults nationwide, support for Moon declined by 5.2 percentage points to 58 percent from 63.2 percent a week earlier amid controversy over minimum wage hikes that have hurt small business owners and seemingly depressed new hiring across the country.  [Joong Ang Ilbo]

You can read more at the link, but I wonder what President Moon’s approval rating will be once the Kim regime reneges on its promise to denuclearize?

President Moon of #SouthKorea sued a citizen, Ko Yeong-Joo, for libel for calling him a #Communist. The prosecutor wants a jail sentence for Ko. Active suppression of the #FreedomofSpeech https://t.co/aH0VxLO7Xd

— Tara O (@DrTaraO) July 28, 2018

Despite the sharp drop President Moon’s approval ratings remain very high:

President Moon Jae-in’s approval rating dropped sharply this week, a poll showed Thursday, amid concerns over a planned minimum wage hike that critics say is likely to further slow the local economy.

In a survey conducted by Realmeter on Monday through Wednesday, Moon’s approval rating came to 61.7 percent, down 6.4 percentage points from a week earlier.

The rate of decline was the steepest since Moon took office in May 2017, according to the local pollster. The latest reading also was the second lowest since Moon’s inauguration.

The sharp drop follows a controversial decision by the minimum wage commission to hike the country’s hourly minimum wage to 8,350 won ($7.39) from the start of next year, up 10.9 percent from the current 7,530 won.

The president apologized for what he called his government’s inevitable failure to raise the minimum wage to 10,000 won per hour by 2020. However, many, especially small and medium-sized businesses, argue the increases have already been too sharp and too frequent.

Of 1,504 adults surveyed in the latest poll, 42 percent of all respondents said the planned wage increase is too steep while another 40 percent answered the rise seemed adequate.

The ruling Democratic Party’s approval rating slipped 3.8 percentage points to 41.8 percent, marking five consecutive weeks of decline, while that of the main opposition Liberty Korea Party advanced 2.5 percentage points to 19.5 percent.  [Korea Times]

Despite having a high approval rating, remember how quickly these numbers can change; former President Park once enjoyed high approval ratings as recently as 2015 when she was at 54%.  She ended here her Presidency in 2017 at 5%.

The English terms "liberal," "human rights," & "democracy" do not translate into analogous concepts in contemporary Korean society. https://t.co/ofAL4hT7q8

— Joshua Stanton (@freekorea_us) July 17, 2018

President Moon Jae-in (L) talks to Russian President Vladimir Putin at the State Kremlin Palace in Moscow on June 22, 2018, while having a summit there. (Yonhap)

It looks like President Moon is in Russia setting conditions for any future summit between Putin and Kim Jong-un:

South Korean President Moon Jae-in began his three-day state visit to Russia on Thursday for a bilateral summit with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin that will likely focus on ways to boost the countries’ economic cooperation, as well as joint efforts to rid North Korea of its nuclear weapons.

Moon’s trip marked the first state visit to Russia by a South Korean leader since 1999, according to his office Cheong Wa Dae.

He was set to deliver a special speech at the State Duma, the lower house of the Federal Assembly of Russia, becoming the first South Korean president to do so in history.

He will also meet Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev later in the day for bilateral talks on ways to expand their countries’ bilateral cooperation, Cheong Wa Dae said.

The Moon-Putin summit will be held on Friday, marking the third of its kind since Moon took office in May 2017. The two first met on the sidelines of the Group of 20 summit held in Germany in July. They last met in September, when Moon attended the annual Eastern Economic Forum held in the Russian city of Vladivostok.  [Yonhap]

You can read more at the link.

It has long been known by Korea watchers that President Moon Jae-in’s Chief of Staff Im Jong-seok has prolific communist and pro-North Korean past.  Over at One Free Korea, Dr. Tara O has a guest post that provides detailed background information that shows how immersed Im was in communist ideology before entering the Blue House.  What I found really interesting was how during the Roo Moo-hyun administration Im founded a group that collected royalties for the Kim regime in North Korea:

In 2005, Im Jong-seok founded and led as chairman, the South-North Economic and Cultural Cooperation Foundation (남북경제문화협력재단). The Foundation has been collecting royalties from MBC, KBS, SBS, and other TV and online broadcasters for North Korean TV footage. According to the Ministry of Unification, the foundation collected an estimated $1,876,700 over 13 years and transferred the royalties to North Korea until the Cheonan sinking in 2010. It is still collecting royalties on behalf of North Korea’s Chosun Central Broadcasting Commission, with the plans to transfer the money once the sanctions are lifted. The foundation even called the Ministry of Defense Public Affairs and demanded royalties for using the missile test footage in July 2017. North Korea does not pay for footage from South Korean broadcasts.

The foundation also has other revenue streams. One is membership and the other is education & research. It collects about 32,700,000 Won (~$30,000) on average for its annual membership. It also became a contractor to the Seoul City and Seongdong District governments, developing South-North “peace education” programs. What is interesting is that the contract with Seoul City was signed on the same day as when Park Won-soon, Seoul City Mayor, appointed Im Jong-seok as the Deputy Mayor on June 11, 2014. Im was the campaign manager for Park prior to that in 2014, and successfully led to Park Won-soon’s re-election.  [One Free Korea]

You can read much more at the link where Dr. O in painstaking detail lists all of Im Jong-seok’s communist and pro-North Korean ties.  Does anyone think that Im Jong-seok who less than a decade ago was collecting royalties to send to the Kim regime is interested in being an honest broker now between the US and North Korea?

I think everyone should be highly skeptical of the claims made by these two men:

On June 1, 2018, Professor Kim Ilsun and Mr. Jeong Choong-je were featured in a live video broadcast about Operation Golden Lily on the TePyung TV YouTube channel. During that broadcast, Mr. Jeong, a nonfiction writer, talked about how there were hundreds of tons of gold ingots buried in the Moonhyun-dong neighborhood of Busan, South Korea. This gold, which was hidden there in 1945 by the Japanese empire, was found on March 2, 2002 by Mr. Jeong. However, Mr. Jeong was then robbed and falsely accused and imprisoned by a group of people who colluded with former South Korean president Roh Moo-hyun and current occupier of the Blue House Moon Jae-in.  [Tepyung.com]

You can read more at the link, but Professor Kim and Mr. Jeong is claiming that threats are being made against them in response to his book to try and silence him.  The below Youtube video from their lawyer Eugene Kim lays out their claims:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CsP8_wAJ4E4

I am highly skeptical of what these two men and their lawyer is claiming without evidence.  For example where in the Moonhyun-dong neighborhood is this tunnel?  Why haven’t third party experts been allowed to examine it?  Did anyone take pictures of the so called gold when it was found?  In 2002 smartphones had not been invented yet, but you would think people would have taken pictures of the gold.  Finally what evidence do they have that Moon Jae-in was even involved if the heist did happen?

When people like this make such sensational claims without hard evidence this actually helps the Korean left make the Korean right look like a bunch crazies and that is what this group looks like right now.

It has been a good week for President Moon Jae-in:

The ruling Democratic Party of Korea (DPK) has swept the local elections as well as by-elections for 12 empty National Assembly seats.

According to exit polls and the vote count by midnight Wednesday, the DPK clinched 14 out of 17 governor and mayoral posts. The largest conservative Liberty Korea Party (LKP) managed to win in the mayoral and governor elections in Daegu and North Gyeongsang Province ― its traditional strongholds. Independent candidate Won Hee-ryong won the Jeju governor’s post.

The DPK overwhelmingly won in southeast regions including South Gyeongsang Province, Ulsan and Busan, exit polls showed. The party had never won elections in these regions before. The outcome means the liberal party successfully overcame deep-rooted hostilities in these areas, largely thanks to the high popularity of President Moon Jae-in.   [Korea Times]

You can read more at the link, but I have always said that President Moon may be a leftist, but he is an extremely smart leftist.  Does anyone think it was just a coincidence that the Trump-Kim summit was timed to happen right before the election?  Also look at how Moon buried the damaging Druking scandal by naming a special prosecutor right before the Trump-Kim summit.  This timing assured that the news would be buried by coverage of the summit.

Finally the Moon administration has been able to effectively take over control of most of the major media outlets in South Korea.  Unless his North Korea policies end up imploding over the next year I expect that President Moon and thus the LKP will remain popular in South Korea.

As usual Professor B.R. Myers has correctly predicted how the Korean left led by the Moon administration will push for a confederation with North Korea by touting the economic benefits:

Image of B.R. Myers from the Korea Herald.

A few months ago I predicted the ruling Minjoo Party would begin agitating for a league or confederation before the June 13 elections. I said that in doing so it would focus on the economic benefits.

Last week I received the various parties’ campaign materials in a big envelope. (As a permanent resident I am eligible to vote in local elections.) Sure enough, the Minjoo pamphlet has a slogan in big brushstroke font at the top of one page: “Peace Equals Economy!” Underneath, next to a photo of President Moon, is the somewhat coded but still urgent pledge to “construct a permanent peace system this year.”

Of course his base knows what this means. To quote an approving headline in the nationalist-left Hankyoreh on April 29:

The plan for unification via a North-South league is hidden in the Panmunjom Declaration.

Indeed it is, and in plain sight. But the Hankyoreh was quick to drop this talk, being mindful of the need to get the Americans to Singapore in as blissful a state of ignorance as possible. This is why street demonstrations for the “peace system” have so far been rather small and sedate affairs (though with a higher proportion of young participants than conservative rallies).  [B.R. Myers]

I highly recommend reading the whole article at the link.

ROK Heads may remember that the Moon administration has been attempting to take the word “free” out of the ROK constitution in order to allow the Kim regime to maintain power in North Korea after a confederation.

Besides constitutional reform, to make this confederation possible, President Moon and Kim Jong-un need President Trump to drop sanctions.  This would allow the Moon administration to invest billions into North Korea, re-open the near-slave labor Kaesong Industrial Complex, and open the tourism projects on North Korea’s east coast.  They would prefer President Trump to do this without the Kim regime having to give up their nuclear weapons.  Trump pushing the Kim regime to completely give up their nuclear weapons before sanctions are dropped makes Moon’s plans for a confederation much more difficult.  This is why Moon has been so complementary to President Trump and thrown around accolades such as “Nobel Peace Prize” in effort to win him over to drop sanctions.

Eventually, as B.R. Myers writes, both the Moon administration and the Kim regime hope this confederation will lead to their ultimate goal of the withdrawal of USFK.  As I have written about before, I don’t expect the Moon administration to directly call for this because it will mobilize the conservative ROK political opposition against him.  Instead he will use the cost sharing negotiations and anti-US groups to make life difficult for USFK to where the Trump administration decides on its own to withdraw USFK.

Once again I recommend reading B.R. Myers entire article at this link.