Why Should We Care if South Korea Finally Has a New President? | with Gordon Flake
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And welcome once again to Why Should We Care About the Indo-Pacific, brought to you by our producer, IEJ Media, and our sponsor, Power Group Asia. More about them in due course. I'm Ray Powell, the former military officer. I'm here in California. Over there in New York is Jim Caruso. He is the former diplomat. How are you, Jim? I am very well, and I'm really excited today that we have an old friend from our time in Australia with us, Gordon Flake, Professor Gordon Flake.

who's the founding CEO of the Perth U.S. Asia Center in Perth, Australia. He got up bright and early to join us because I guess he's an early riser. Before joining this Perth U.S. Asia Center, he was executive director of the Masfield Foundation in Washington. And most importantly, he's been involved with Korea since you were an undergrad, no? No.

studying Korean, involved with the Korea Economic Institute in Washington. And we're here today to ask you to begin the first important question. We just had elections in Korea. Why should we care about the outcome of the elections? Why does it matter to the rest of the world? Well, Korea is a consequential country. It's not the Korea of the Korean War when it was among the 10 poorest countries in the world. It is one of the top 12, 13 richest countries in the world.

It is a member of the G20 and an important treaty ally of the United States and an important security partner of other treaty allies of the United States, such as Australia. So whether you're talking about culture and K-pop and the Korean wave, or you're talking about consumer goods like Samsung or Hyundai or Kia, or if you're talking about a diplomatic presence globally,

Korea really is a consequential country. And so elections in that country and political develops in that country impact us all. All right. Well, Gordon, so we started kind of this drama. Let's go back to, say, December, right? So it's been a very interesting six months for Korea Watchers. In fact, Jim and I put out a podcast with Lieutenant General Retired Chen In-bum back in December last

entitled, Why Should We Care What the Hell Just Happened in South Korea? Because there has been martial law, there has been an impeachment, there has been an arrest, there has been a release, and there has been an election which brought in the other party. So what the hell is happening in South Korea now?

Well, I mentioned a minute ago Korean culture and the fact that Korean dramas are popular globally. I don't think any Korean drama with their typical plot twists and turns could compete with politics in Korea over the last six months. You really have to go back a little bit further than December. The previous now president, Yoon Seok-il, won over the current president in a very tight election just in 2023. And

And he actually 2022, excuse me, that and after a couple of years, there was a midterm in National Assembly election in 2023, where he lost the majority in the National Assembly, the opposition party, the party of the Democratic Party.

President Lee Jae-myung now won an overwhelming majority. And that functionally stymied the ability of the president to get his agenda through. And so over the course of 2024, he just grew more and more frustrated. And then finally, and by what all accounts is a

potentially alcohol-fueled kind of decision late one night, decided to declare martial law on the 3rd of December in 2024. And that really set into play a series of events that you just described very well.

Within a week and a half of him declaring martial law, several things had happened. The National Assembly heroically kind of scaled the walls of the National Assembly compound, which was being blockaded by the military, went in there and voted to overturn martial law, which is a pretty courageous act in that environment. By the 8th of December, they had impeached the

the president. But Korea is a country that's gone through three impeachments in the last several decades, and they've got a pretty well-established process. That then went to the Constitutional Court. It took a number of months for them to deliberate, but in the end, the impeachment was upheld.

On the 3rd of April, the former president, Yoon Seok-il, was formally removed from office and that necessitated, according to their constitution, a new election. So you had a flash 60-day period of campaigning between the current and now recently elected president, Lee Jae-myung,

and the leader of the opposition now party, then the ruling party, Kim Moon-soo, a member of the National Assembly, a former governor of Gyeonggi Province. In the end, Lee Jae-myung, the almost president previously and now current president, won a pretty decisive mandate.

In the process, there was a lot of twists and turns. There was four different acting presidents. So once the president, Yoon Seok-yool, was removed from office, the prime minister stepped in as an acting president, but he himself was impeached. So then it went to Choi Sang-mok, the deputy prime minister, who was the second acting president.

But then the impeachment of the prime minister was not upheld. So he came back in as the third acting president until he himself decided briefly that he was going to try to run for the presidency himself. So he stepped down. Then Lee Joon-ho, who was the education minister and then acting prime minister, became acting president. So you had this real twist and turn, four different acting presidents, a lot of chaos. For me, however, the real story wasn't the chaos.

for me, was the fact that the institutions held. The National Assembly did their job. The martial law, which was unprecedented in modern times, and most Koreans think that they've moved beyond that era of democracy in Korea. They left it behind 40 years ago in the 80s. They stood up. The people stood up. The courts did their role. The impeachment was upheld. The president was removed from office.

And so in contrast to some other countries around the world where the institutions haven't proven to be quite so robust, Korea, I think, actually has shown itself to be a pretty robust, well-functioning democracy. And we've seen that now just in the last week with the election of the president, E.J. Mael. Can you describe the policies that this new president is likely to undertake? He's described in much of the Western press as leftist. What does that mean in the Korean context?

So when he was running for the presidency in 2022, he had a much more leftist series of positions. He called U.S. troops on the Korean Peninsula an occupying force. He was pursuing a universal basic income for everyone. Very, very progressive leftist, however you want to characterize it.

In the intervening time since then, in the last three and a half years, he has done what the Korean politicians call a right click. You know, he's steadily moved to the right. And so his election this past week has to be viewed as an election of a pragmatist, of a centrist. So we'll see actually now that he's got power and he's got a relatively convincing mandate what he does.

But in the end, his positions going into this election vis-a-vis the United States, vis-a-vis Japan, vis-a-vis North Korea, vis-a-vis the economy are all much more centrist, much more pragmatic. So again, whether that's real or that was just pre-election positioning, it remains to be seen. But most of the people I talk to are convinced that the international environment does not allow for a leftist agenda. There's

There's not a lot of room to move on North Korea policy because North Korea is not interested in engaging. Again, the current economic crisis that Korea faces in the era of Trump tariffs, the economy shrank in the first quarter of the year. You know, he really can't pursue a very progressive policy.

economic policy. He needs to get economic growth up and running again. He's already had phone calls with President Trump and the Japanese Prime Minister, Shiba, and he's heading off next week to go to the G7 meeting in Canada. So again, I think we're going to see a pretty centrist administration, at least initially. So the headlines today, at least in the United States, read about a discussion he's already had with President Xi

and an effort to, at least according to headlines or at least according to news, stabilize South Korean-Chinese relations. I know that there are a lot of people, at least people that I've talked to who are maybe on the right side of Korean politics, who are very suspicious of Lee, maybe for some of the reasons you already mentioned, but also just suspicious of people from the left in general as being too cozy with Beijing and too cozy with Pyongyang.

How deep does that run and is there any merit to it? Well, there's no question that it runs deep, that progressives in Korea, progressives globally, are going to be a little bit softer on China, a little bit more open-minded on North Korea. And then the Korean peninsula is probably even deeper still, just given the longstanding division of the peninsula and the traditional pendulum swing that takes place between the right and left on North Korea policy in particular.

China is a little bit more nuanced than that, just because, again, the world's in a different place. I could apply kind of an Australian prism to this, and the two of you will know this very well. You know, the Australian body politics views of China had changed dramatically in the last decade from, you know, if asked whether it's an opportunity or a threat.

a decade ago, it was 80% opportunity, 20% threat. Today, those numbers are almost inverse. And the same is true in South Korea. Even before Australia was on the receiving end of some very coercive economic measures from its largest trading partner, South Korea was on the receiving end of some very coercive economic measures from its largest trading partners. And so I don't know that there is a broad-based relationship

a public level of support for a fundamentally different approach towards China. In fact, for me, the analogy probably is Australia. You know, we had the election just three years and a month ago of the Labour government, recently re-elected, and they too were tasked with improving relations with China, which had been quite bad. I

Many people called that a thaw. I thought that was the wrong temperature analogy. I thought really what it was was reducing the temperature. None of the fundamental issues in Australia-China relations have gone away. And there have been no fundamental compromises on policy or response to Chinese demands on the Australian side. And yet they weren't just openly provoking the relationship. I think we're going to see something pretty similar in Korea on China relations.

You know, they're looking to make sure that they keep things normally. You know, the central point of the conversation that E.J. Myung had with Xi Jinping was to invite him to APEC. That wasn't necessarily a necessary thing. He's the leader. He was already invited, but it gives them a platform upon which to have a conversation since Korea is hosting the APEC leaders meeting in, I think it's November. So I think it's just about...

Reducing the temperature, normalizing it, getting back to having conversations, even though there are some serious differences.

Now, of course, Lee Jae-myung also asked Xi Jinping for help on North Korea. That's kind of standard South Korean diplomatic playbook, particularly for progressives. But there again, as I was mentioning earlier, I don't anticipate that there is space for any dramatic shift in policy just because North Korea, much more closely aligned with Russia right now, and North Korea much more strongly supported by China right now, is not looking to South Korea for anything, just like it's not looking to the United States for anything.

So there may be some slight nuances in what Donald Trump wants out of North Korea and what E.J. Myung wants out of North Korea. But the one thing that I think is pretty clear is that North Korea doesn't want much out of either of them. But given the changes in the U.S. policy apparently in the world and expectations for allies and trade, how does the new president navigate negotiating tariffs while also being concerned

basically dependent on U.S. defense forces and nuclear umbrella in the face of this buildup in China and in North Korea. So you, in your question, have done the one thing that I fear the most, and not just for Korea, but for treaty allies around the world, is you've conflated trade negotiations and tariffs with the alliance. And that's precisely what the Trump administration is doing as well, and it's something I find quite concerning.

So Korea is deeply concerned about Trump tariffs. Not only are they subject to the 10% base and steel and aluminum tariffs, but auto tariffs and auto parts tariffs, and they've got a higher tariff overall of about 26%. So it's serious. I don't have firm numbers yet. By balling indications, Korean auto sales to the U.S. are down by double digits already this year. Big deal. And again, the Korean economy shrank significantly.

in the first quarter. So for EJ Myung coming in, his priority number one is somehow getting some relief to those tariffs.

Korea was at a real disadvantage coming into the election because they didn't have a functioning government. So acting president, former prime minister, real trade expert, former ambassador to the U.S., Han Deok-soo, he tried several rounds of trade talks with the Trump administration. No progress, but that's not really a surprise because other than the fake deal with the U.K., which we've not yet seen the outline on, there doesn't seem to be any

to negotiate yet on the US side of this. But one way or the other, there's pressure on E.J. Myung to get some reduction of the tariffs just because South Korea is an export-led economy. Their big corporations need a reduction of those tariffs to return to profitability and the Korean economy needs that. So it's a real item of concern. The area of conflation that I'm concerned about

is that early on in these negotiations, President Trump said that he wanted one-stop shopping. And again, I was listening to another reporter this morning where they're talking about bundling, which means they want to talk about tariffs and automobile tariffs, but they also want to talk about burden sharing. In other words, the amount that Korea as a treaty ally of the United States pays for having U.S. troops on the Korean Peninsula, broader cost-sharing discussions, who pays for military exercises and housing, all that kind of stuff.

And that really concerns me. And again, I'm not naive. I know that that these these cost sharing or burden sharing negotiations between the U.S. and its treaty allies are hard. Right. And they're difficult negotiations because it's a question of who pays. Right. And how that works out. But traditionally, those are almost hermetically sealed from the grubby world of trade and business and corporate profit.

Because those are about alliances, about honor, the willingness to shed blood for one another. The negotiations are taking place in the Pentagon bureaucracy, you know, around how we maintain our alliance.

And my worry is if you conflate that together as a negotiating chip, you know, for a trade deal, you are cheapening both the U.S. presence on the Korean Peninsula, but the role of the alliance. The U.S. are functioning, becoming paid mercenaries in that regard because it's done for commercial gain, not the other way around.

And I really worry about the long term impact that that will have on social license in a place like Korea, because if and when those things fail and there's another set of negotiations, I worry about the blowback on those things. And so I'm anxious about that. I'd like to keep them hermetically sealed. Now, to be clear, I'm also not naive. Countries like Australia, Japan, the Philippines, South Korea, treaty allies of the United States,

We internally will conflate the two because there's a limit to how hard Australia or Korea is going to push the U.S. on trade negotiations, knowing our dependency on the United States for security and the alliance.

But that's one thing for Australia or Korea or Japan to do that. It's another thing for the U.S. to impose that conflation, that one-stop shopping. That's where the danger lies for me. So again, I think I probably won't get my way. I would love to see them hermetically sealed. My worry is from every indication coming out of the E administration and certainly the demands coming from the Trump administration, there will be some conflation. They're looking for

how do you broaden this? And the real challenge is that doesn't seem to be anybody in the Trump administration empowered to actually make a deal. The Japanese have found this now through five rounds of negotiations. They keep walking back because they don't,

don't really know what they want. And you end up having the U.S. Secretary of the Treasury arguing with the U.S. Secretary of Commerce, you know, in front of the Japanese because they can't agree what they want. And neither of them have the ultimate authority that relies with one man. So a bit of a challenging spot that the Koreans find themselves in, difficult economically and in their diplomacy with their lead trade partner, not lead trading partner, but their security partner, the U.S.,

In terms of the alliance, so there are still about 25,000 U.S. troops in South Korea. U.S. troops on foreign soil can, you know, generate, you know, some sense of security, but also some sense of resentment. What is the balance of sort of that sentiment among sort of the average South Korean population? How do they feel about American troops on their soil in 2025?

These issues ebb and flow depending on the issues. So like clockwork, every decade or so there will be some incident with an American soldier that will then spark the public imagination and lead to a lot of protests and real concern about it. I do think that the uncertain and volatile international community in which we live in right now leaves South Korea feeling quite vulnerable and

During the Bush administration, George W. Bush administration, and where he had his counterparts in Kim Dae-jung and then Noh Mi-hun, there was a period of time where the Koreans were pushing to take back what they called wartime operational control over U.S. troops there.

positioning themselves as having the US troops imposed upon them. And under then Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, they were pushing on an open door because there was a lot of people in the US that said, why do we have our troops? Let's just take them out. And that kind of shocked the Korean body politic, both left and right.

when they realized that the U.S. troops on the peninsula were not an imposition by the United States, but something that they relied upon in terms of their security against North Korea, which was increasingly provocative, but also in a very volatile neighborhood with China next door as well.

And so since that time, I think there's a pretty broad based consensus among the political elite of the necessity of the alliance and the necessity of U.S. troops on the Korean Peninsula. As you mentioned, they're down to 25,000 now. There was just an announcement this week that they're reducing it by another 4,500.

that's going to cause a lot more anxiety than the remaining number. You know, when I was in Korea in the 1980s, there was a kind of a, you know, a magical number of 37,000 troops that you thought you couldn't abrogate, but they've abrogated that for a long period of time.

And, again, there's real anxiety. So if anything, even with a progressive government, I think there's probably more anxiety about the potential withdrawal of U.S. troops than anxiety about their presence, because there's been a lot of work that's taken place over the last decade

20 years to reduce the footprint. It's no longer in the middle of Seoul. They're removed to different bases. The level of interoperability is just incredible. And I think Koreans view the alliance as paramount to their own national security strategy. So at this point, public support for the alliance remains robust. But obviously, I have concerns, just as I do for America's allies anywhere around the globe in the current environment.

The big advance in the past administration, the Biden administration, was getting Korea and Japan to work together on national security issues. How do you see that going now with the new president in South Korea and in the face of these apparent pressures from the Trump administration? Yeah.

So one area where I will give great credit to the now former president, Yoon Seok-yeol, was on this issue in particular. I mean, he ideologically and personally believed that

and I think correctly believed that Korea needed to improve its longstanding, very difficult relationships with Japan. And so he began to pursue a policy of rapprochement with Japan that was ahead of public opinion by far and ahead of his own government. I thought it was true leadership. And it was reciprocated by then the prime minister in Japan who said,

also was a head of public opinion in Japan and a head of the positions of his own government. And this is Prime Minister Kishida. And I thought that was a tremendous breakthrough in the previous administration. In Washington, you will have paid a lot of attention to the Camp David summit where President Biden hosted the two and bigger hands. But the truth is the U.S.,

doesn't deserve a lot of credit for that. I'm glad they did that, but this was really leadership by those two gentlemen in the region. And there was great concern now because, you know, Yoon has been removed and, and Kishida has, has, has, has resigned and he's been replaced by Ishiba Shigeru. Um, I took great heart, uh,

with the fact that in this week that the first phone call that E.J. Meng made was to Donald Trump. And by all accounts, that went pretty well. They were able to bond on assassination attempts and a few things. And it turned out to be a pretty friendly phone call. Right. And the second phone call he made was to the prime minister of Japan, Ishiba Shigeru. And he's been pretty clear as part of his right click that he intends to maintain that.

Now, this is also the area of the greatest anxiety that I have, right? Because progressives, by definition in Korea, tend to focus much more on history, much more on blood, much more on the period of Japanese occupation, and they have less of an internationalist view. So if you're an internationalist,

the mandate for Korea and Japan to work together is obvious. But if you're only focused on the peninsula and North Korea and your history and your blood, that mandate is quite weak. And that's been a weakness of progressive governments in the past. So I'm hopeful, early good signs. And I do also think like so many things here, this is not an era for goofing around. And I think you're going to find that

Korea and Japan are going to have very similar concerns and anxieties around the region in which they live, China and North Korea, but they're also going to have the same anxieties about how to deal with the Trump administration. The same basic problems when it comes to tariff negotiations, the same basic concerns in terms of

You know, the reliability of the U.S. is kind of an ally in the region. And I hope that that will continue to push them together because together I think they're going to be much more effectively. And I would say together with countries like Australia in advocating for the U.S. role in the region.

Well, let's pull that back a little further. So, I mean, what is in it for Seoul to have a closer relationship with Tokyo? What benefits could Seoul gain from a deeper relationship with Japan? So very importantly, it frames their relationship with the rest of the world.

So other than China, which would probably prefer divide and conquer tactic, or Russia that would like divide and conquer, really every other country in the world wants to see Korea and Japan work together.

And Japan is the soft power superpower, right? You know, their favorability ratings, again, with the exception of China and Korea, are the highest of any country anywhere around the globe. And so for Korea to be working together, you know, in cooperation with Japan enhances Korea's position, role, reputation globally. And that's certainly true in countries like Australia. We want Korea and Japan to work together. We feel we need them to work together together.

not just in helping the U.S. engage more fully in the region, but on critical minerals, on energy security, on maritime security, and the full spectrum of issues that we work on together. Korea and Japan, as democracies, as treaty allies of the United States, as highly developed economies, are working.

naturally synergistic. And so we want that to happen. And when that doesn't happen, that just has all sorts of spillover complexities that don't benefit anybody else. So that's number one for Korea. There are real economic implications too. Despite the fact that people don't like to talk about it, the Korean and Japanese economies are deeply integrated. And so on a corporate level, whenever there's these political difficulties, that has some real spill-on effects on Korea's economy that I don't think Korea can deal

deal with right now. It also has real implications for Korea's most important diplomatic relationship, and that's with the United States, because the United States wants them to work together. Now, I have anxiety about that right now, because if I think back to Trump won 2016 to 2020, that traditionally,

I'd always viewed the role of the United States, and I know this sounds paternalistic and I'm not meaning it that way, but realistically, that's what it was, was kind of the more paternal figure that whenever Korea and Japan would get in spats, the U.S. would come knock heads together and say, hey, cut this out. We need you guys to work together. Stop it. And what that really did...

What really happened was the Americans would go to the Japanese and say, yeah, yeah, yeah, I know these Koreans are crazy, but it's very important for us to work together. And then they'd go to the Koreans and say, yeah, yeah, yeah, we know the Japanese really haven't come to terms with their histories. We know there's some real problems there, but it's very important for us that you work together. And they would cajole and they would work together. It wasn't really knocking heads. But in the end, there was that adult supervision kind of role. Well, in Trump 1, that didn't exist.

There wasn't somebody playing that role anymore. Right. And that's an anxiety I have right now, you know, is to so far the signs are good so far, you know, continued support of the trilateral. And I'm hopeful that will continue in a serious way. But I'm not so sure that we have an administration that thinks in terms of, you know,

anything other than the zero-sum bilateral as opposed to kind of broader strategies. So there's some anxiety I have. But yeah, I think there's a lot that Korea has vested in that relationship beyond the bilateral with Japan. So beyond the bilateral with the U.S., we've seen Japan form not alliances but military relationships with Australia and the Philippines, part of the Quad.

South Korea is not seen. Is that a purposeful policy of keeping their heads down or their plans, you think, to join some of these other non-U.S.-centric groupings?

Oh, I think Korea would love to have joined those before, but they were in an inward looking position at the time and it just didn't happen. So I just list a couple of them. Number one, there is no reason at all that Korea is not in the CPTPP, the Cooperative and Progressive Agreement for the Trans-Pacific Partnership.

Now that the UK has joined, it is the only game in town really that's moving forward to holding together some vestige of what we would call the rules-based order when it comes to how we organize our economic activity. It's a really important deal. And Korea's absence is notable. They're just because they just didn't have the gas in the tank. And going back to the question about Japan,

Japan's role in that kind of made it a little bit more sensitive. And also, they were focused just on the U.S. So I anticipate there will be growing pressure for Korea to kind of work together with what we call like-minded countries, which, again,

in this case may or may not include the United States when it comes to international trade, in holding that together, right? Because it was really Australia and Japan that held that together. Korea would love to have been in the quad, right? In fact, they were shocked.

you know, that Australia was included and not them, you know, because, you know, they have double of our population. They're also a treaty ally of the United States. Um, and so there's still ongoing talk talks about how Korea could be kind of worked together with quad plus that, that, that, that, that, um, and, and,

that would have been more robust under a conservative government, which is more internationalist. My guess is you're not going to see a major push under EJ Myung to do the quad plus because the quad itself is kind of a bit of a question mark right now. Right. I mean, Marco Rubio hosted a first meeting of the quad foreign ministers within an hour of his, his being sworn is secretary of state. Um, and that's good, but,

but when it comes to leaders levels, meeting the agenda for the quad, uh, and given what's happened in Washington over the last four months, uh,

And I don't really know myself where the Quad stands. I don't think a lot of Aussies know as well because the Quad was deliberately kind of a force for good in the region. And a lot of the things that they were pursuing, you know, vaccine diplomacy, this kind of stuff, which are now being attacked by the U.S. And so, you know, climate change. I don't know where the Quad stands. And so I don't anticipate a lot of movement on that front.

AUKUS is a more sensitive one. The Koreans have talked about caucus just the way the Japanese have talked about JAUKUS. They'd love to be part of it. There's real interest in Pillar 2, which is the more technological research cooperation part, but that has yet to really be defined in a meaningful way. And so a lot of conversations, a lot more smoke than fire yet on that front. Koreans had been for decades interested

asking the United States for nuclear submarines. And they were told repeatedly, the U.S. shares that technology with no one. Absolutely not. Then in one fell swoop when the AUKUS was announced, it became quite clear that we had shared it with the Brits. And now we're sharing it with the Aussies and Korea was not included in that. That hasn't gone away. I was listening to a Korean reporter

foreign policies thinker just this morning who was saying that one of the things that Korea might ask if you expand the negotiations on these one-stop shopping in terms of the tariffs would be for the Koreans themselves to ask for nuclear submarines.

What they did get in the previous administration under Yoon Se-kyung was some U.S. submarines doing much more regular deployments to the Korean Peninsula. And it's similar to what Australia is going to get in the short term in a year and a half here when we have submarine rotational forces west based here in Perth. You know, that was kind of a bit of a tip to create to address their concerns in terms of that front.

But realistically, this is not going to be a podcast about AUKUS. AUKUS by itself is so difficult and so many challenges. And that despite the fact that it being among three very close allies who all have very similar legal systems and were members of the Five Eyes, it's going to be difficult then too. I just don't imagine a scenario in which AUKUS is expanded.

Now, I'm sorry, I've gone on a bit long here, too. What I would love to see, but I have low expectations for, is Korea playing a much more robust role in China's seas, in South Pacific, in the Indian Ocean. Those were all things I was lobbying for in the previous government and was more optimistic about it. Maybe we'll come around to that. The good news is they don't

Korea under Lee Jae-myung don't appear likely to try to jettison the Indo-Pacific strategy, you know, that Korea came up with the end of 2023, which is a good sign. So there's, you know, there's some regional context there yet, but yet to be defined. Well, so, you know, talking about the East and South China Sea, the sea of sort of the most immediate concern to South Korea is the Yellow Sea, which lies immediately between

it and the east coast of China. And there's been a bit of a kerfuffle in the LOC recently involving something called the provisional measures zone, where China has decided to

embark on an aquaculture project breeding salmon deep in the sea. And not only has it put out some of these aquaculture cages in the provisional measures zone without coordinating it with the South Koreans, it's also put out this big rig. It looks almost like an oil rig. And South Korea seems to be pretty concerned about this. What is the provisional measures zone and why is South Korea worried about fish?

Well, you're absolutely correct. I was in Seoul just two weeks ago, and I participated in a seminar organized by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which they called an Indo-Pacific Maritime Security Seminar. And a good chunk of their focus was on their near seas, what the Koreans call the West Sea, and specifically on this Chinese project.

So like the South China Seas or most areas, there are these disputing claims in terms of what is called for in terms of under the UN Convention of the Law of the Sea in terms of where territory ends and where territory begins, what activities exist.

And there's an overlapping area between where Chinese claims are and South Korea's claims are. And thus far, that has just been only that. It's only been an overlapping claim. It really hasn't been much of an issue. It's not necessarily new. It's just an escalation of what's happened. In recent years, you've seen a lot of very...

provocative action by the Chinese. For example, they will lash together, you know, 15, 20 shipping boats in a giant line and march them together in such a way that, you know, it challenges the South Korean Navy's ability to kind of repulse them from those areas and

So obviously there are fisheries issues, there are longer term concerns about natural resources in that region. But the main issue is really one question of international law and sovereignty. And so that's what's being challenged. That's why Korea cares about it. Because obviously this is a challenge to their view of where their rights lie when it comes to the UN Convention of the Law of the Sea. And China's abrogating that. So I anticipate that will continue to be a very important issue. But

A difficult one to resolve, as the Philippines can attest or as the Malaysians can attest or the Vietnamese can attest, because China now is of sufficient capability that they're able to project strength where they couldn't before. Hence, you know, the South China Sea disputes right now are no longer just an academic exercise. They're real kinetic disputes.

And so now Korea has its own kinetic issue. Now, I would hope that would encourage Korea to think more broadly about the importance of, say, the UN Convention of the Law of the Sea, the special tribunals decision on the Philippines, you know, and be a more forceful advocate with other like-minded countries in terms of the rules-based order globally. We'll see. We'll see how that plays out.

I haven't really heard anything from the E.J. Myung Kamp yet about that. You have to remember, they only had 60 days to campaign. He's only been in office for a week. He doesn't yet have his own foreign minister appointed. He's appointed a good friend of mine, Wee Sung Not, to be his national security advisor, who's extremely capable, former deputy ambassador of the U.S., former ambassador to Russia, member of the National Assembly. And he's got a really good team building around him, starting to, but we're still not there yet. Yeah.

Well, you know, Trump had all sorts of executive orders ready to go. So, you know, he's a little behind the times here. Let me ask you about we've had a lot of discussion about the lack of U.S. shipbuilding capability. And some people sort of posited, well, maybe we can get South Korea to work with us in building military vessels for the U.S. Navy. Is that a realistic idea? Yeah.

I think so. They certainly want it to be. South Korea had for years been the world's largest shipbuilder, having taken that crown from Japan. They've now fallen behind China. And so South Korea's shipbuilders are looking to move up the value chain,

They can't compete with China on big bulk carriers anymore. I had a chance just last October to go down to visit the Hyundai Heavy shipyards. You know, 12 of those Goliath cranes, the most of any shipyard in the world. They produce almost a ship a week. And I'm not talking about little sailboats. I'm talking about these massive, you know, three, 400 meter long container ships and LNG ships.

But whether it's Hanwha Ocean or Hyundai Heavy or Samsung Heavy or some of the other smallest shipbuilders, Korea has a well-established, very capable industry. They're all looking, again, to move up the value chain and do LNG carriers or ammonia carriers for hydrogen because there's more value out there. But there's no sector that's more value add than the military.

And so Korea is rapidly developing a very capable defense industry when it comes to shipping as well. The Sejong class of destroyers is considered by many to be some of the best destroyers on the planet today in terms of their capabilities.

Korea bid for the Future Frigate Program in Australia. They were one of the five initial bidders, and it was actually two Korean companies bidding against each other, Hyundai Heavy and Hanwha Ocean. In the end, they weren't down selected, and so now that's a choice between Mitsubishi Heavy in Japan and Tyson Krupp in Germany, and we don't yet have the decision on that. But even absent that, the Koreans have continued to be very aggressive in

particularly Hanwha Ocean. So Hanwha is the legacy of the old Daewoo conglomerate in Korea. And by culture, they're all very aggressive. They've got Michael Coulter, an American president of the Hanwha Defense globally, and he's very, very proactive. They just bought a shipyard in Philadelphia, the old Philadelphia shipyard, and that doesn't get them. But clearly their objective is to be able to build for that. And just this morning as it happens,

Now, it turns out that the U.S.,

I can't remember the Congressional Investment Review Board. I can't remember the exact body what it was, but it gave approval for Hanwha to increase their bid. They currently own 9.9% of Austal, which is an Australian shipbuilder based here in Perth, Western Australia, but which is the only non-US shipbuilder that builds for the US Navy. And they have a separate company, Austal USA, based in Mobile, Alabama, that's now working on seven different US platforms

including building segments of the Virginia-class submarines. And so Hanwha has requested approval to be able to up their percentage in Austal to 19.9%, which has been apparently approved in the U.S. I'm not sure the nuances of that. It's very fresh news. It has not yet been approved in Australia. I'm a little bit more skeptical because Austal here has been designated our national shipbuilding as key to our plans for

Future frigates with Japan and a bunch of other stuff as well. So I'm a little bit skeptical about it. But regardless of how that turns one way or the other, there's no question that Korean shipbuilders have the capability, the industrial might that Australia, the UK, the United States and Canada have all that atrophy. And so we know we're not producing our submarines fast enough. We know that we don't have the naval shipbuilding capacity. So I think it's a pretty logical thing for us to rely upon

our treaty allies and very important partners like Japan and Korea that have been successful in maintaining their industrial heft. In fact, I think it's required, particularly given the fact that we won't otherwise be able to compete with the building program in China. All right. Well, Professor Flake, let's get you out of here on this. First 100 days, what do you expect President Lee to focus in on? What do you think will be at the top of his agenda? Yeah, I think...

It's a really good question. I think it's going to be environmentally determined.

And so as I was kind of hinting at the outset, while his predilections might want to be a very progressive equality focus, universal public income focus on the underserved parts of Korean society, when you've got an economy in not yet a recession, but having had a negative growth for a quarter, facing some really punishing tariffs for the United States,

Growth, growth, growth is going to be his number one mandate, right? So that's going to determine his economic agenda. So I anticipate you're going to find a pretty pro-market policy. I anticipate he'll meet quickly and regularly with the leaders of the big chaebol, the big Korean conglomerates, you know, the 10 days and Samsungs and LGs of the world, just to make sure that they're working hand in glove to kind of weather this current thing.

Internationally, I'm really encouraged that he is going to the G7. I spent two weeks in Korea and everybody that I could bend their ear on, I said is absolutely essential. I know it's less than two weeks after he has been inaugurated, but he needs to go to the G7. And one of the reasons is I wanted him

to be embraced by those like-minded partners, right? Who make him part of that international community, that challenge that we're having right now of dealing with, not just the rise of China, but the different way that China is using its power and the real uncertainty coming out of the United States.

And so in that context, to have him meet with the other G7 powers, plus Australia has also been invited, I think is a really good thing that helps frame his foreign policy. It makes him a global leader as opposed to an inward looking Korean progressive leader. I think that's good. The real unknown is, can he make progress with the U.S.?

You know, and I don't know. I don't know what progress looks like with the U.S. And I don't know that any other country has really figured that out yet. So and that probably is going to be determined more by developments where you sit in the United States and developments either here in Australia or Korea or elsewhere. But there's no question he was democratically elected. Korea has a robust democracy that worked well.

He didn't quite get a full majority. I think 49.3% or something like that. But he does have a mandate, one by over 8 percentage points, and he's got the National Assembly. So he has the ability to govern in a way that his immediate presser didn't for the last year and a half. And so some key choices. And obviously, you two having spent time in Australia, I think you're going to see some real parallels there.

between Australia and Korea as well because similarly we've got a labor government re-elected here with a much stronger mandate and that just enables them to kind of operate a different way. So right now, obviously it's a watching brief, but I'm relatively optimistic. All right. Well, so let's get your 30-second commercial for the Perth US Asia Center in Australia. Where can people...

People follow it. What are you working on? And why should people follow it?

Well, thank you. I mean, we actually have been from day one champions of the Indo-Pacific. So your podcast is one I should have been following from day one. I'm just a relative of you. I'm a newbie when it comes to podcasts. My staff had to put the app in my phone and teach me how to do it. I've kind of reached that Luddite curmudgeon stage. But from day one, we recognized that sitting as we do on Australia's Indian Ocean capital in Perth,

For us, the Indo-Pacific is existential. People still tend to think of Australia as Oceania, but Western Australia has never been part of Oceania. Again, we're closer to Singapore than Sydney, closer to Canberra than Jakarta. We look out on the Indian Ocean in India. And so for us, the Indo-Pacific really represents a whole of nation foreign policy, a whole of nation policy.

strategy. So we have been champions of the construct of the Indo-Pacific and continue to try to pull the rest of the country out of their little comfort zone of Oceania into Southeast Asia, into the Indian Ocean forward. We've been around for 12 years now and with strong support from the federal government, the state government, the University of Western Australia and corporate partners, we do a full range of seminars and workshops and now

a very broad sweep of online courses, micro-credentials, masterclass, sprint classes, and then a really robust research agenda, all trying to interpret Australia's role in the Indo-Pacific in our relations with Japan, Korea, Southeast Asia, Vietnam, Indonesia, and India. And of course, underpinning all of that is that you can't understand Australia's relationship with the Indo-Pacific without understanding the alliance with the United States and our allies

at least past kind of cooperation and a whole range of issues that were of shared interest. And you can't understand our relationship with the United States without understanding our shared interest and concerns in the region in which we sit. So that gives us plenty of work to do. And we're 12 years into that experience. All right. Well, we do thank you for coming on and we hope to have you on again. My pleasure. Thank you.

And of course, we do want to thank our fantastic sponsor, Bauer Group Asia, a strategic advisory firm that specializes in the Indo-Pacific. Bauer Group applies unmatched expertise and experience to help clients navigate the world's most complex and dynamic markets. Jim Caruso, of course, is a senior advisor with Bauer Group, and you can visit them at bauergroupasia.com.

Well, Jim, you know, we've been watching South Korea now for months. It's kind of a question of when do we do another South Korea podcast? And I think we finally just decided let's wait till all the dust settles. Yeah, and I think that actually worked out pretty well because we have a president. He's elected with a majority. He has a majority.

He's a known quantity, I think, and he's moved toward the center and got a chance to discuss with someone who really knows Korea and knows the U.S., really well, like Gordon Flake.

To talk about the tightrope President Lee's going to have to walk on economics and security. Yeah. Well, I really do hope that there is hope for that relationship with Tokyo because, you know, just from an alliance perspective, it would just make the world a difference to see Seoul and Tokyo working closely together. I think given the pressure the U.S. is putting on both those countries, they have to be even crazier than we are to try and break it apart. Yeah.

All right. Quick story from you. All right. Well, we were talking about the Yellow Sea, so I'll tell you a very recent story. As most of our listeners probably know, I lead an organization focusing on maritime security called SeaLight. And in the particular instance we were talking about with this provisional measure zone and this salmon aquaculture, the first inklings that we had at SeaLight that something was strange

in the Yellow Sea was these news stories that talked about, quote, steel structures that the South Koreans were concerned about and that they were, you know, why were there these steel structures in the Yellow Sea? Well, of course, as a maritime transparency outfit, we couldn't resist that one. We wanted to know what a steel structure was and why the South Koreans were so worried about it.

And so it took a little while before we finally got a news report saying that a particular South Korean research vessel went out to go look at these things and met the China Coast Guard. And we had the name of the vessel and we had the date and that gave us what we needed. Because up until then, there was just no way for us to sort of go grid square by grid square looking at fuzzy imagery to figure out what a steel structure was.

So we did. We did the ship tracking. We found the steel structure. It turned out that there was this huge rig sitting there and then this weird little hexagonal thing sitting next to a ship. And we're like, what in the world is that? And so we finally we did some digging and we had to do, you know, some reverse image lookup and some Google Translate and all the rest of this stuff. And we finally figured out it's aquaculture. They're breeding salmon. Right.

So again, who cares if they're breeding salmon? Well, apparently you're supposed to coordinate this within this provisional measure zone. And so China, because this is the way China does gray zone, is it just decided not to, it wouldn't coordinate this. And that was China's way of asserting its sovereignty. You know, just say, okay, I know that there is this coordination structure, but no, no,

So that's where all of this really came from. So we finally went to one of our satellite providers, SkyFi, and we asked them if they could try to find us a picture of this rig.

It took a few weeks before we got a good day with good weather and were able to get a really clear shot, which we were able to get out first into the media. We're very proud of the fact that we kind of broke the story on the steel structure and had kind of the, we were first out with the pictures. But it was quite the open source intelligence coup and really sort of, it was like a treasure hunt for us. We really wanted to know what this thing was and what it looked like. And we were thrilled to be able to be the first on the scene.

All right. So feather in your cap or a salmon in your pot. Exactly.

All right. And we want to wish a salmon in the pot of our producer, Ian Ellis Jones, who currently has a post out about Chinese naval movements out beyond the first island chain with a couple of carriers out there that is getting massive, massive attention on X. So that's why you should follow him at Ian Ellis Jones if you want to get all of these things into your feed. And so if you, of course,

You should also follow his company, IEJ Media, if you're interested in those kinds of graphics. If you enjoyed this episode, don't forget to subscribe and follow. We now have 38,000 subscribers on YouTube. So you can follow us at youtube.com at IP Podcast. Of course, you can also follow us on all the audio podcast services sites.

Apple Podcasts, Spotify. You can follow us on social media, X, LinkedIn, Blue Sky. You can also go back and listen to a couple of our recent podcasts. Of course, there was the one that we referred to back during the podcast, Why Should We Care What the Hell Happened Just Happened in South Korea. That was with Lieutenant General Chun In-bum in December.

Of last year. And then recently, if you want to hear all about the Yellow Sea thing, I was on the China Global podcast with Bonnie Glaser back in April, and we released it as a crossover episode on our platforms on the 30th of April. So if you are interested in the Yellow Sea, go back and listen to that.

Finally, you can email us, indopacificpodcast at gmail.com. It's indopacificpodcast at gmail.com. And we want to thank our sponsor, Bauer Group Asia. Visit them at bauergroupasia.com. For Jim and Ian and all the salmon, I'm Ray. Thanks for joining us on Why Should We Care About the Indo-Pacific.