North Korea News Podcast by NK News - How South Korea’s political crisis impacts North Korea policy

Episode Date: March 12, 2025

D-day is rapidly approaching for South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol, with the Constitutional Court expected to rule on whether to uphold his impeachment in the next week. Whatever the court decides, it will have profound implications for not just domestic politics but also North Korea policy and peninsula security. To better understand what’s on the […]

Welcome everyone and thank you for joining us today for the Korea Risk Group briefing that is an NK Pro and Korea Pro joint briefing. My name is Jungmin Kim, lead correspondent, sorry, correspondent of NK News and NK Pro and editorial director at Korea Pro. Today's event is not affiliated or sponsored by any government entities, and it's conducted through an invitationally hybrid format. So we have online participants joining us today.

And Andre and Jimin here agreed that the remarks today are on record. Today's topic is to discuss what happens now. Basically, we are all waiting for the Constitutional Court ruling on whether it will uphold the impeachment of President Yun So-hye-ger following the December 3rd martial law declaration. And this has created a period of uncharted waters,

basically extraordinary political uncertainty, with very far reaching implications for not only domestic politics, but also security dynamics and North Korea policy issues as well. And some media reports right now are saying that either it's going to be this or next Friday, I think their baseline is to look at the Romu-hyun, President Romu-hyun and Park Geun-hye impeachment case where the Constitutional Court ended up ruling on Friday. But this is sort of a shaky baseline. So it's basically within the next few days, or around March 10th, if we calculate as two weeks. And in any case, we will hear the result very soon. And this would become a moment of truth, so to say,

for one, domestic political consequences, and two, social security policies, and especially North Korea policies, and also especially within the context of the changing security dynamics recently in two to five years ahead. Today I'm joined by two distinguished experts, Professor Andrei Lankov,

a leading authority on North Korean studies and professor at Kung Min University. Andrei is also a director at Korea Risk Group and is one of the world's foremost experts on North Korea. Choo Min-Lee, a US trial lawyer practicing at Los Angeles-based law firm and a contributing analyst at Korea Pro. He provides expert commentary, analyses

on legal and political issues in South Korea. He's also the author of a book about the need for anti-discrimination law in South Korea. So, Andre is sort of representing the NK pro side of things and Choo Min is sort of representing the Korea pro, South Korea side of things today. And before we move on to the moderated discussion today, I know that there have been a lot of moving parts recently regarding impeachment. So, I'll just very briefly take about five minutes to run through what happened so far to set the scene for everybody. What happened so far? First of all, the Constitutional Court recently concluded its final hearing on February 25th after 10 hearings and 16 witnesses.

A very simplified version of the main controversy so far. First, constitutional and procedural aspects of the martial law was one of the main controversies like the cabinet meeting, the procedures being met or not. Second, UN's perceived emergency situation at the time, such as National Election Commission computer system integrity, perceived espionage and most controversially what UN calls the opposition's legislative dictatorship quote-unquote, whether this is justifiable reason for declaring the martial law emergency. Martial law. Third, there has been dispute over who wrote the details of the martial law decree that banned a lot of political activities and media censorship as well and

strikes including medical strikes and also whether Yoon attempted to set up a emergency legislation body. Four, whether Yoon or defense minister instructed to drag out and detain lawmakers, this was one of the main controversies throughout the 10 hearing as well. Lastly, the so-called arrest list note, memo by the NIS deputy director,

Hong Jangwon, whether or not Yoon really instructed him to round them up, agents, sub-lawmakers, that has been one of the main controversies. And here's a 30-second version of Yoon's 67-minute final defense speech, which was 77 pages. He, first of all, defended martial law as necessary public appeal for national security, not for personal gain or military suppression.

He framed it as a, he said, he borrowed the format of the martial law declaration as a mean of communication tool, basically, to let the citizens know that something serious is going on. Also, he said that he denied the alleged intention to stage an insurrection, emphasizing allegedly very minimal and unarmed military presence and the short-lived nature of

the implementation. He also justified actions by citing North Korea and Chinese influence, weakened counterintelligence, as well as the opposition party's obstruction of UN's governance activities. And lastly, he also used the final segment of the defense speech to make pledges of the presidential 2.0, sort of, in case he is reinstated. He focused on his goal to conduct constitutional reform, long story short. And now what happens now, the timeline to uphold the impeachment, at least six out of eight so far, justices must vote in favor and the ninth justices seat remains vacant amid the appointment disputes. If the impeachment is upheld, the presidential

election must be held within 60 days, which would be like the mid-May deadline. Impalling so far, which is quite unreliable because it went back and forth. It's highly competitive race between potential candidates from both major parties until last week, but this week the gap widened again with DP leading back a little bit. And critical upcoming dates also include March 26, which is Lee Jae Myung's high court ruling on Democratic Party leader each among high court ruling on election law violation he was already sentenced to one year presence as to your suspension in the lower to the Supreme Court with a technical ruling deadline of June 26, which is after May.

So that is important. And until then, acting president Choi Sang-mook leads the government during his interim period and transition committee. It's usually one or two months of transition committee when after someone is elected. But looking at the parking head to Moon's sort of handover period, there might not be a transition committee. And Moon's case, May 9th election and then May 10th, he inaugurated immediately.

Public opinion also remains deeply divided on whether you should be removed from office, although pro-impeachment is still the majority. And lastly, all of this in South Korea is happening as we monitor extreme shifts geopolitically. I can mention like tariffs from the US, American allies, a fear of Benjamin looking at the Zelensky-Trump summit just, I guess, 48 hours ago. Russia, US talks about the Ukraine war. North Korea continued support of Russia,

continued stance on no unification, and also China sort of observing everything and sometimes commenting on this growing divergence between Europe and the US. So this is a five-minute version of what happened so far and what's going to happen now. And with this, I'll move on to the moderated discussion. We'll examine four potential scenarios to simplify it a little bit, and then move on to the Q&A section. Scenario is based on three, which is premise under impeachment being upheld, and one is impeachment being dismissed. And for the first one, scenario A would be impeachment upheld and IJMU. And with this, I'll go to you first, Ju-min. This looks like so far the most probable scenario. That's why I put it as scenario one. How would

a Lee Jae-myeong presidency after all this debacle in South Korea reshape South Korea's domestic political landscape or not reshape, especially given his legal cases and his support base being super polarized and also his shift towards very centrist, so-called centrist, he's calling himself conservative, centrist conservative sort of positions like pro-business, a sort of way, how would this impact the South Korean political landscape? So good morning everybody, thanks for taking the time. I've been thinking about all of these scenarios on the way to the event today.

And this kind of strikes me as the one that most preserves kind of the typical rhythm of South Korean politics as it's existed so far. Because it would essentially be the same situation we were in after the impeachment of Park Geun-hye, which is a sitting president from the Conservative Party does something that a decent majority of the people consider unforgivable is replaced by a candidate from the other party and

the focus of the new administration in large part would be reforming the sort of institutions that led to this kind of thing happening. So I think a Lee Jae-myeong presidency would not, a lot of people paint him as being kind of an extreme far left sort of leader. I don't think that's necessarily accurate. My view of it is that he is essentially going to run a very typical kind of Korean capital L liberal sort of presidency in which there may be some tensions with Japan,

some issues with Alliance management. And there will probably be a large focus on, I struggle not to use the word retribution, but kind of exacting a price upon the conservative party and kind of conservative affiliated groups for their support of Yun's military coup. But that's how I would see it. So it's really not all that different

from how Moon Jae-in approached it at the beginning of his presidency. I guess the difference between Moon Jae-in and Lee Jae-myeong would be their tendencies or backgrounds, I guess, because Moon Jae-in was, President Moon Jae-in was a bit more ideologically driven when it comes to foreign policy, security policy, looking at North Korea as compatriot. While Lee Jae-myeong, he's very much focusing on like whole business sort of stances recently. And even in one of the interviews, I believe it was economist interview. He said, Oh, I'm fine with trilateral. I'm fine with improvement of relations with Japan if it's good for security. So what is the motivation for elites sort of diverge away from the, you know, Kim

Dae-jung, Noh Moo-hyun, Moon Jae-in sort of lineage way of looking at policies? So Jung Min-mik makes a very good point because Moon Jae-in was very much a person of the Korean Democratic establishment. That is, he comes from a long line of politicians who look at the world in a certain way in terms of alliances and approach towards North Korea. Lee Jae-myeong is not that. He's very much an establishment. He is the establishment at this point, but he comes from a non-political background and not your typical politician. So he is in a way less married to those kinds of views,

which is why I think it's a bit premature to assume that he would act, be more extreme or act in a certain way. So we just don't know exactly what his policies direction might be. Exactly, I mean, you see how he's approached this coming election. I mean, he's coming out and saying he's a center-right candidate that doesn't necessarily match up with his record.

But it also implies that, you know, we have no way of predicting how he will actually act once he is in office. Because the one constant with Lee Jae Myung throughout his political career is that he knows how to get elected. He's very good at electoral politics. So how does that person act once he no longer has to run for office anymore? That's an interesting question. I see. I'll move on to Andre now. With this sort of tendency

that we are seeing so far with Lee Jae Myung or we're not seeing so far with Lee Jae Myung, how would North Korean leader Kim Jong-un likely perceive and respond to a Yves Demelme presidency? And will he see any strategic advantage in this outcome? Well, first of all, I think that currently, North Korea is surprisingly indifferent to the political developments inside South Korea, because the world has changed.

What is South Korea from the North Korean point of view? For many decades, it was a bar-fallen area to establish control over at some point in the future. But after the 1980s, it became increasingly clear, the conquest of South Korea, that unification on North Korean condition is not very likely. Then for a couple of decades, actually more, three decades from, say, mid 1990s, South Korea was essentially an ATM. You push the button, the right button, and you get nice, rusty cash. And it's all, again, it sounds like a journalistic kind of, you know, a way of talking,

but this is a matter of fact statement. The major value of North South Korea or the North Korean decision-makers is as a source of material financial aid. And the problem is, right now they don't need it and they cannot get it. First of all, they are in a very favorable situation because of the confrontation between the United States and China. China badly needs North Korea and is willing to keep North Korea afloat no matter what. They have a sort of economic and even political security guarantee from China because China needs them as a buffer zone.

They can offend China, they can do a lot of things Chinese don't like. China will swallow it because they want North Korea to stay stable. And North Koreans understand that China is behind their back, not because Chinese like them, Chinese probably despise them, but it's irrelevant, Chinese need them. On top of that, they have really Russian money coming from this unbelievable strike of luck known as the Ukrainian War. They have made, God knows how many, I would say probably about 4, five, six billion dollars by selling ammunition, weapons and

soldiers to Russia, which is a fortune for North Korea. You can get sausage, Russian sausages in Pyongyang, you can have good chocolate in Pyongyang, and life is getting better, at least in major cities, because they are selling their soldiers and above all they are selling their ammunition. So they are not in a terrible need of money right now. And what is more important? Have they been in a different situation? Because of the UNSC sanctions system, South Korea cannot be of great use, even if Lee Jae-min is elected.

And unlike Moon Jae-in, Lee Jae-min being less ideological, I would completely agree with Choo Min-hye, less ideological. He is probably will be, and plus it's a slight generational change, he will be less eager to help North Korea, but probably he would like to do what the left-leaning nationalists of South Korea have always been doing, that is, saying truckloads of cash to North Korea with no questions asked. He probably wants it. I don't think he really is eager to do it as, say, Moon Jae-in or Noh Moo-hyun, but he doesn't mind, but he cannot, because any meaningful interaction, this economically meaningful interaction with North Korea would be a violation of the UN Security Council resolutions. You can do some humanitarian aid, very limited, but North Korea is not in a terrible need of this humanitarian aid

because Chinese and to some extent Russians are doing it anyway. So this aid is a bit ideologically contaminated if it comes from South Korea. So South Koreans can, even if they are willing, and they are less willing than in earlier periods, the South Korean left will be, even if it's willing to help, to basically shower money, yes, they cannot do much. They can do anything meaningful. Therefore, North Korean position is quite simple, it's not our game. They would like to see EGG. Moon in control because we have

seen that the right can do rather dangerous and stupid provocations and create absolutely unnecessary tensions with domestic political gains, everything. Yes, North Korea would mildly prefer left in power, but it's not as important as it used to be. And until the South Korean ATM is repaired, and there is only one repairman who can do it, his name is Donald Trump, he knows a way to repair South Korean ATM, so it will start being those splitting of money again. But he's too busy with other problems right now. So I think that they would prefer Ichimion, but chances of getting profits from him are very low, and they care only about profits when it comes to South Korea.

So it's better to be neutral and keep South Korea at some distance and be quiet and sort of disinterested. Okay. Yes. Just very quickly, you said ATM and the tool to sort of fix it. What would be the tool to fix it from US point of view? To fix the ATM? To counter fix it. Go to Hanmunjomro, I don't know, to Hanwha again-Jom or I don't know to Han-Wu-Ei-Gae and sign a small deal because if basically

South Koreans, sorry, if basically Americans get a say peace treaty or armistice in Ukraine and they are obviously seriously pushing Ukrainians, I would say blackmailing Ukrainians to accept Russian conditions, essentially. If it works out, probably Mr. Trump will switch his attention to the Korean Peninsula and he is likely to finish the business. He nearly got nearly got done in Hanoi in 2019. That is as called small deal, which means North Koreans are sacrificing significant part of their nuclear facilities, but keep their nuclear weapons in delivery system in exchange of sanctions being lifted and maybe recognition, maybe something else. And if it happens, once sanctions are removed, South Korean ATM will be again in good nice working order, full of cash. The question is that, yes, sanctions should be removed first, and only Americans

can do it. Well, let's stay within this scenario for maybe three to four more minutes. Follow-up for both of you. For Yu Chemin, under the situation that Andre is depicting right now, Lee Jae Myung has different views on, so far, at least as far as we know, views on relations, ideal relations with China and Russia, South Korea's ideal relations with China and Russia. And let's say when we discuss this scenario, it's May or after May, let's say Ukraine were ended.

What would be Lee Jae Myung's sort of decision be trying to redefine his South Korea's relation with China and Russia? And how would the domestic public see it? Because there is a big anti-China sort of sentiment rising, so that's two questions for you. For you, Andre, do you think Lee Jae Myung and Trump and Kim will get along?

Either of. Sure. So I think the domestic political response is kind of the important which Russia and China, particularly China would be extremely unpopular domestically, aside from kind of the died in the world, old school liberals that we were just discussing. There's nobody in Korea who actually wants that for a variety of reasons. So I think the realignment will not be as impressive as people are expecting. But we also have to take into consideration that to some extent the realignment will be forced because of things that are happening in the world right now. And in large part, South Korea's foreign relations have always been centered on the United States. And with the changes that are occurring there, there will be a need to realign regardless. And the question really is, is that realignment more of a quote unquote, switching side sort of

realignment? We're going to move from the US to China and Russia, or is that kind of more of a multilateral realignment where we maybe turn away from the US, stop relying on the US a little bit, but enhance our relationships with Europe, with other countries in the Indo-Pacific. And I think I would expect it would trend closer to the latter because Lee knows that the former option that it might help fire up his base, but otherwise it's not going to be helpful for him politically. So firing up the base, would that be important after he's already elected? Well, I think it would because you know the history of Korean presidencies is always you have a five-year term, but in reality you can only really do stuff for three or four years. Once you lose internal party control, your freedom of movement as a president is greatly reduced. I think Lee realizes that. And Lee is somebody who's essentially executed

a hostile takeover of the Democratic Party. He is not a Democratic establishment kind of traditional guy. So he knows his hold on the party is tenuous. And the only way to keep a hold on the party is to make sure that you're energizing the base. But I think he will choose to do that in other ways. I mean, I think this is where the retributionist policies

that I was previously discussing will play a role. But we saw in the first year of Moon Jae-in's administration as well, right? Exactly. And it was the same thing for Moon Jae-in. When Moon came into power, there were many different factions of that party. Now, Lee comes into power with more consolidated kind

of control over the party. But he's going to want to maintain that control for as long as he possibly can. I see. Thank you. Andrei, will they get along? to repeat traditional anti-Trump propaganda because, you know, his opponents like to say, insist that Mr. Trump loves dictators. It's a bit of simplification, but generally speaking, he really has sort of mild admiration for any kind of strong personalities, and being a dictator, you are always a strong personality. And obviously Kim Jong-un, basically they stayed, they used to communicate and was, as American side sort of admitted it, that they were communicating then during sort of say,

interregnum when Donald Trump was not a president. So I think that chances that they will try to restart some negotiations are pretty high. And we have seen a lot of signals about it. Now their resources are concentrated on Ukraine. How will Ijmyon get into this picture? It's a big question mark. Right now, I don't see much interest in Ijmyon in Pyongyang in his personality. I think that there are, first of all, unless North Koreans

are not going to be very active in dealing with South Korea, as long as sanctions remain enforced because it's just a waste of resources, and even if sanctions are removed, well, they got burned with Mungyin. Obviously, Mungyin is my kind of... I'm not sure, but I think there is a high probability that Mungyin, following his usual diplomatic style, provided North Korean leaders with some, I would say, exaggerated, rosy picture of the situation before Hanoi talks, and it resulted in a diplomatic debacle, and they are very unhappy about it. And at any rate, they are probably losing interest in sort of losing a touch of ideological sympathy. They used to have some ties with the South Korean left, so I'm not so sure about Ijemyun. But again, if the sanctions are removed, why not approach Ijemyun and basically ask for

some money with nothing in return? And it's quite possible that money will be delivered because a significant part of Ijemyun base, maybe minority now, much than say 10, 15 years ago, but still a significant part of South Korean public would see this unconditional aid being dispatched to North Korea so well. But frankly, I think that there might be problems with H-E-V-O-N in his interacting with both Donald Trump

and Kim Jong-un. That reminds me, let me just ask one final question within this scenario. There is a conventional wisdom sort of thing in DC where US policymakers sometimes, maybe not anymore, but they tended to see that South Korean progressives tend to be more anti-US. Is this still, do you think this is still the case? As in, are they actually anti-U.S. or somewhere in between? What will the U.S.-South Korea sort of alliance and defense security guarantee, extended deterrent, this sort of stuff look like if it's a Trump and Lee Jong-un, both of you?

Thank you, Jung-min, for asking this question, because this is kind of a pet peeve of mine, which is if the question is, are South Korean liberals less pro-U.S. than South Korean conservatives, the answer is yes, they are. But that does not mean that it is right for U.S. policymakers to decide that, well, whenever the South Korean liberals come in, we can't work with them. So, you know, what can we do? I think it is incumbent on folks who are interfacing with the Lee administration to understand that these are also rational actors with policy preferences, and there are ways to approach

them and ways to carve out spaces for cooperation that are different from how you would approach a conservative administration, but not necessarily impossible or wrong. So that would be what I would say about that. You can work with these people, even if they are ideologically different from what we are used to. Also, you kind of have to. You kind of have to. You kind of have to. Well, what option do you have? Okay. I would say over 20 odd years,

I have been living this time in, well, we can say in 30 years, starting from 1992, I have living in South Korea. I've seen growth and then slow motion decline of anti-American feelings. So they reached their height around say 2000-2005 and since then over the next 20 years they were in retreat. And there is something, many of people

here are relatively new to sales career and one of the most dramatic changes of the last 10 years Korea. And one of the most dramatic changes of the last 10 years was a sudden explosion of anti-Chinese feelings. Historically, South Koreans have been quite positive or neutral towards China. It's changed pretty much overnight over the last decade. And this is the reality. So the South Korean conservatives keep telling everybody, even some of my colleagues keep telling me, that this left are secretly despised Americans, they are crypto-communist, ready to surrender to Kim Jong-un. Well, 25 years ago, such statements would be serious exaggerations, but not completely unfounded. Not the case. It seems to be the case a long time ago. The left in power will demand more autonomy from the United States. When ordered to run by the White House, they will be running, but maybe they will run a bit, not that fast, maybe. Or maybe sometimes they will stop for a while asking questions. I

assure Mr. U.S. President that we should run that direction, but they will run. Yeah, and right now, will run. Yeah. And right now, I and another fact, as I have said, growing for me somewhat irrational anti-Chinese, a wave of anti-Chinese emotions, which frankly irrational, but it's here, it's big. For once, for a century, a bit more, Koreans loved to hate Japan. Now the object of this passion is being changed to China. And we're seeing it all across the town these days, especially on Saturdays, with in some cases, a protester wearing Captain America costume, sort of trying to get into a Chinese embassy forcefully.

Let's move on to the second scenario. We can only touch on this maybe one or two minutes because it's very unlikely. Looking at the Lee Jae-myeong ruling deadline, impeachment upheld, but different Democratic Party candidate wins would be the second scenario and not Lee Jae-myeong. So far, there are competitors that are in the polls that are competing under margin, which are Kim Boogam, Moon's former prime minister, Kim Dong-hyun, the Gyeonggi governor, and Kim Kyung-soo is slightly higher in some of the polls, and sometimes in some polls, Woo-won-sik, the National Assembly Speaker, is also mentioned, but he does not look like he wants to actually run. So it's these three Kims, so to say. Let's say that Lee Jae-myeong, in whatever scenario, he sort of is convicted and it's upheld in the Supreme Court and he cannot run for the presidential election. If these and these three Democratic Party figures are the established sort of Moon, Roe and Kim sort of lineage people with the conventional DP sort of way of looking at foreign policy and North Korea policy. Would this change anything, any of the things that you mentioned so far, if non the sort of DP candidate wins? I'll start with Jimin.

Yes. So the first scenario was for the kind of the, quote unquote, boring status quo scenario. We are now moving on to scenarios that are not that, and many that would, I think, would have substantially more damaging implications for stability in the country. This scenario is, the risk here is that there is essentially no world in which this scenario happens through kind of purely electoral means, because there are no realistic competitors to Lee and the Democratic Party. The chances of him losing a primary election are essentially nonexistent. So the scenario in which this happens is one in which a court rules prior to whenever the election date is that Lee is not eligible to run.

And obviously that would throw the election into chaos, especially because even if a court rules on a very accelerated basis, it will likely not happen until after Lee has already been chosen as the Democratic Party's candidate. So you would essentially having a court deciding the results of an election. And my general rule of thumb is even if a court decides the result of an election in a way that I like, I don't want that to happen because the damage to trust in democratic institutions would be immense.

And just to be clear, I don't think this will happen because. If there's one constant with judges across the world, they don't like deciding elections. So I think- The courts. The courts, yes. So I think the court will slow play this and make sure they are not involved. But if it does happen, I think the erosion in public trust would be huge. There would be kind of a polarization of the left

in the same way there has been a polarization of the right where the right has kind of very rapidly moved in the more far right populist direction because of the sense that Yoon is being persecuted. A similar thing I think would happen with the left and Lee and you know we'd have a great deal more political instability than we already have which is troubling because you know we've already got a lot of that. Andrey? I think that from the North Korean point of view, there is no pronounced, any meaningful differences between all candidates of the Democratic Party. So I don't see any special like or dislike for Ijemyon or whoever else in their leadership. Got it. Thank you. Let's move on to the third scenario.

Impeachment, upheld and PPP candidate wins. The conservatives win. This would be a situation where one of the so-called frontrunners in the polls sort of win the primary in the PPP and sort of run for the presidential election after you is impeached and faces and faces the criminal case separately. So far, the names that are mentioned, you're probably already familiar with Oh Sehun, the Seoul mayor, and Hong Joon-pyo, the Daegu mayor, who already kind of declared he wants to run and he started making presidential speeches already sort of. And there's also Han Dong-un who just returned and our correspondent Junha here wrote the story for Korea Pro reading the entirety of Han Dong-un's book recently. Thanks for doing that Junha. So he is already also making presidential pledges as well.

And so these are these three are I think front runners Kim Moon-soo, the labor minister is also very high up on the poll. He's popular, but he does not intend to run, apparently, or at least not for now. He's saying that. So let's say the party primary selects one of these three people, Oh Se-hun, Han Dong-hun, or Hong Joon-pyo, and they win.

How do you imagine a South Korean political landscape domestically sort of evolving after this? If a PPP candidate comes in and wins for Chumin, and for you, Andre, what would be their foreign policy sort of direction after they continue the conservative regime? So in some ways, it's difficult to kind of put this into one tidy basket because all of these people are very different people or indeed all of them have very divergent views about the martial law declaration. But I think the one thing we should all consider is that these people are going to have to run

in an extremely competitive primary where there's going to be four or five people who could potentially win. And because of that, we all know what the general rule for primaries are, you run towards your base so I would expect once we get into actual primary season you will see a lot of these folks drifting even if they don't want to into a slightly more pro-Yun direction which would mean that any of them winning the general election would indirectly even if he is impeached and imprisoned, a

sort of ratification of Yoon's conduct, which again would be harmful for political culture here in all sorts of ways you could imagine. Even Han Dong-un, you think? Even Han Dong-un, because I think a scenario in which Han wins the nomination is one in which he's put in a great deal of effort to kind of rebuild the trust with the base of the party. And I think if you look at kind of his indecisive conduct during the impeachment process, a lot of it is because he wanted to maintain plausible deniability. If I have to run a primary, I want to be able to say that I was not immediately ramming impeachment down the party's road. Right.

Andrei? I think that North Koreans will be mildly upset by such a scenario, because it means that for next five years the South Korean ATM will be unoperation. But because under any other scenario, chances of getting operational are not that terribly high. And because they have two other ATMs working, well, not ATMs, but really they are getting

paycheck from two other places that is Beijing and Moscow. Not a great deal. So I think they will basically continue the current line, which is denial of any kind of interaction with such a government, unless and until at least they will make some deal with Donald Trump, which is possible, but by no means certain. And if there is no deal, there will be no interaction. Definitely, if there is a deal, there might be some, but not that much. Well, for them, it's not a good news, but not a disaster either, because this new leadership probably will not be excessively provocative, not to the point of, say, youths of yore, and it will be quite acceptable. Like sending drones or... Yeah, they will not.

Probably we are not going to see many drones flying over Pyongyang, but even if they do, it's still okay. They can live with that. They would be... They don't like it, but they can live with that. Okay. And so, yeah. Under this third scenario, you keep mentioning ATM,

but there is also a case where this ATM sort of disappears and turns into a bomb, nuclear bomb, that is, because these PPP candidates, let's say candidates, these are all mostly either pro-nuclear armament or nuclear latency for South Korea. And you mentioned that they might move to more pro-Yun sort of, I thought they would move more towards centrist. I'm not sure what the decision might be, but so far what I see is whenever they want like public support for their candidacy or they want headlines, they always mention security issues to sort of court to their main conservative base. Would they actually be serious if they're elected about this?

Would they actually be serious if they're elected about this? So I think a kind of more serious mainstream discussion about quote unquote nuclear latency is inevitable on some level and it is going to happen regardless of whether a conservative is in office or a liberal is in office because I don't see nuclear issues as necessarily being partisan in one way or another. Think if some of you have lived in Korea for a longer period of time, you may be familiar with the popular 1980s novel called, It's a novel about a fictional world

in which South Korea had a secret nuclear program. And that novel is actually widely read in kind of the traditional liberal circles that we've been discussing today. So because South Korea and kind of the left is very nationalist coded. About autonomy. About autonomy, yes. And there's always been kind of a fascination with nuclear weapons on both the right and the left. So I usually call them left-leaning nationalists of the present day, they're still in the position of the Democratic Party to be pro-nuclear. And objectively, and this is desire for autonomy, because a nuclear North Korea will be more independent of the United States or any other major foreign player.

And I know some people of very smart people of the conservative political views who are opposing nuclear latency on nuclear arms exactly because they don't want their country, South Korea, to be too independent of the United States. They believe that if South Korea gets nuclear, it will move away from the United States, which in the long run will be bad for Korea. So they are against nuclear and they are very hard-line conservatives, ideologically. But like it or not, it's first of all, it's bipartisan issue. Second, the current developments, especially not only in North East Asia, but worldwide,

are pushing South Korea to go nuclear. And not maybe immediately, not in five years, 10 years time, but I think that if I do enough exercises and don't over it, I will see, I believe long enough to see the first South Korea nuclear test. Well, I do need to mention that recently, I think the past week or two, there were one or two Democratic Party lawmakers that this did discuss nuclear latency in a way that they are not sort of ruling it out. One was the NIS, former NIS, and now DP lawmaker Park Sun-won, he mentioned nuclear latency, and there was this anonymous high level DP that also mentioned that nuclear automation

shouldn't be off the table. So it is definitely not just a PPP sort of issue like you mentioned. Chungmin, just to add to that, I would note that, you know, in Korean elite circles, there is this sense that being open about the desire for nuclear armament is impolite, inappropriate, taboo. And that is particularly high when they are talking to people from other countries who are working in Seoul, such as yourselves. So if you, if the signals you are seeing publicly or at receptions or places where you meet these people

are at a two or three, I would assume that the actual discussions are at a significantly higher level than that. Thank you, Jimin. And I will try to figure out who more of those people are that are not talking actually publicly. Let's move on to the last scenario, the most chaotic scenario, which is impeachment dismissed and Yoon reinstated.

This would mean that five or less judges upheld the impeachment. I don't know where to start honestly with this, but for you, Jimin, what would be the immediate domestic political ramification if he returns to office? What is the, like, how do you imagine that sort of going in the first few months? I would start by asking everyone to look out the window, because if that happens, the street you're seeing right now is going to be full of people immediately. And none of you will be able to go to work, So we'll all get a day off. Work from home? Work from home. Okay.

It's, I think what we would see is kind of civil disobedience to the extent that South Korea has not seen since 1987. Yoon, regardless of what happens to him legally, I think he no longer has the ability to govern. Because even to his own party, he's useful as a figurehead, but he'll no longer have any kind of influence. To the populace at large, he is toxic. And I think we will have a new president within a year one way or another. So not to be overly melodramatic about it,

but this is kind of the doomsday scene. Andre? I just keep repeating the same statement. In the current situation, North Koreans are not going to care much. For North Koreans, it's the worst scenario, but it's not that bad because they are not going to care much anyway. They would like to see EJMOM or any other left nationalist leader in control, but it's not that vital for them. They will be unhappy to see UN Security reinstated, but it's not vital for them.

So, the UN is reinstated, but it's not vital for them. And chaos inside South Korea is probably not a bad use for the North. So, but once again, for the time being, currently, North Koreans are not that terribly much interested in the local development. And just to add one more thing, I note that Yoon is being subject to two separately or proceedings right now. You have the impeachment trial, but you also have a criminal trial. So just because he's not impeached, that doesn't mean the criminal trial go away. It's written into the South Korean Constitution for precisely this reason that insurrection is an exception to presidential immunity. And for an incitement of foreign aggression.

Yes. So not only do I think he's not going to be able to govern while he's on criminal trial for a year or more for insurrection, I could very easily see a scenario in which he becomes subject to arrest for pretrial detention, at which point he's actually not able to govern because he's sitting in a jail cell.

Do you think prosecutors will try that hard if it's reinstated? I think they will try this. I think as someone who deals with prosecutors for a living, there is a great deal of momentum for these kinds of things. So once you start a case, it's difficult to stop mainstream. And from the perspective of the prosecutors who've been working very hard on this case for the past couple of months, and they're not stupid, they're seeing what's happened to the prosecutors who are prosecuting Donald Trump in the United States. If you returns to power, if this case gets dropped, I don't think it'll be particularly good for them. So they have a personal incentive to continue working on this case and prosecuting the case diligently. Right, last question and then open questions to the floor.

For you, Andre, Yoon made a lot of claims about North Korea threat, North Korea agents, North Korea espionage, and also specifically China espionage in South Korea during his defense against impeachment. And let's say he's reinstated, how would Beijing respond or not respond or see you sort of legitimacy as a counterpart? And for you, Jimin, you if he's reinstated, do you think the so called like minded countries, NATO, IP for the sort of partners, will they have Yoon Bak as legitimate counterpart?

Is there any scenario that could sort of lead up to that? I'll start with you, Andrey. Well, the accusations of espionage, frankly, are a bit funny. Of course, of course, any country spies over its neighbors. And of course, there are Chinese and North Korean espionage operations going on right now. And I would be very surprised if it's not the case. And of course, it's applicable to South Korean

and South Korean intelligence agencies too. They are also busy spying on China and North Korea. It's normal. But accusations of the time which were used, they really, it's a bit like of basically witch hunt time, especially when these accusations of Chinese being, you know, involved with the elections, the election fraud, for me, I was frankly quite surprised to see that it's taken so seriously by the

South Korean right-wing activists. Many of them believe that the elections were basically stolen by the Chinese agents and blah, blah, blah, which is frankly complete rubbish. But it's sort of new because these accusations have not been used for a long time in the political struggle inside South Korea. Well, I would say it's quite sad. And especially Chinese, they have made some kind of very polite statements.

I believe that they are a bit surprised to see. I'm not saying that there are no Chinese spies in South Korea. Of course, there are a lot of Chinese spies in South Korea. And there are a lot of South Korean spies in China or in Russia or in Japan. Of course, they should be there. But having said that, having said that, all these accusations look quite irrational and probably create additional completely unnecessary tensions in relations with China. Yeah.

Andrei Chumin. OK. A leader who is powerless domestically and essentially on borrowed time obviously would have less influence on the international stage. So yes, I expect it would affect his credibility if he were, even if he were reinstated. Now, is that better or worse than the temporary presidents

we have now? I'm not sure. But either way, all of this has already done, I think, an incredible amount of damage to our diplomatic standing in a very important and transitional time for the world. And I expect it will continue to do damage for a very long time, which will need to put a lot of effort into recovery. Looking to stay informed about South Korea's fast-evolving political, business and cultural landscape? Join us on Korea Pro, the go-to resource for in-depth analysis, expertly curated by top-tier

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Thank you. We have around five to 10 minutes. Let's go to John. My next question is about South Korea-Russia relations. Now, both countries' bilateral bilateral ties at a low point, but neither side has broken each other's red lines as of yet. And regardless of how this war in Ukraine ends, diplomacy will have to continue. What needs to happen for South Korea-Russia relations to go back to pre-2022 levels? Or is it even possible considering the level of cooperation between Russia and the DPRK? The question from John is about South Korea-Russia relations. The bilateral ties are at low point,

but neither side broke the red line. They're having multiple mentions of red line. That sort of kept moving as well. How this war ends, depending on how this war ends, the diplomacy continue, will it ever go back to pre-2022 level or is it even possible considering North Korea-Russia relations? I'll go to Andrei first. I would say that life expectancy of Russia-North Korea friendship is very short. How short? Short life expectancy of this newly born friendship between Russia and North Korea. It's not going to last. It's not going to last because it's based on the military situation because it's based on this shipping of ammunition. Probably soldiers are less important because obviously their performance was not very impressive.

But ammunition are working very well. Shells are exploding, but they should explode. But in the long run, economies of North Korea and Russia are not mutually compatible. Items where North Korean economy has competitive advantages, there are very few such items, but they do exist. There is no demand for such items in the Russian economy. Politically, in spite of all

Particularly in spite of all anti-American rhetoric, Russian elite despises North Korea, which for half a century, starting from Soviet era from the 1960s, has been seen in Russia as a joke, as a pathetic, comical dictatorship. Something reminding of, you know, this Hollywood movies about crazy dictators. It's pretty much how North Korea has been seen. Now there are some changes in some parts, sectors of the Russian society, but generally not in the elite. So once hostilities is over, relations between Russia and North Korea will go to basically to what they used to be. That is some polite words and some smiles, maybe some diplomatic support, but very little mutual interest. South Koreans don't want they are sympathetic towards Ukraine,

but they don't see this war as something meaningful for South Korea. It's some kind of a distant war in a distant country between distant nations, which is irrelevant to South Korea, and they would be very happy to go back to trade and economic exchanges with Russia. As soon as it will become politically possible, that is, again, decisions are going to be made in the White House. Do you wanna jump in on that, Shumain, about the public perception?

No? Not to add. All right. Let's move on to Jim. And just one thing, a bit of without excessive detail inside us. And just, you know, last week, not somewhere, not far away from this building, for example, there was a very nice dinner whose participants on both Russian and South Korean sides,

every participant has a fortune of about $1 billion or more, where they were basically talking what they will do when this nonsense is over. That is good to know. Junha? I'm Junha Park from Careers Group. I just have a scenario you mentioned. What is the case in the fact that Yoon does not accept the constitutional quorum of the nation. And his legal team tries to appeal it. And also, Shih-Tzu, the current acting president, does not fall for an immediate deletion. And the Seoul Western District Court,

as we saw a couple of weeks ago, it was stormed by a couple of pro-Yun writers. Will we see the same thing? Will it just be a temporary French group that goes against the Constitutional Court? Or even if Yonhap is elected as president, will that turn into a mainstream political ideal? Oh, I didn't think about that.

Thank you for flagging that, Chun-Ha. Chun-Ha from Korea Risk Group flagged a fifth scenario, which is Yun does not accept the constitutional court ruling upholding the impeachment. What happens then? Will the legal team try to appeal? Is that even possible? And what if Choi Sang-mo back then president

does not call on the presidential election immediately. Truman? Conversation just keeps getting more and more exciting. Yeah. So I think on a positive note, we kind of already have a preview of what happens when the president doesn't accept a lawfully issued court order,

which is what happened in December when he tried to resist a arrest warrant in his criminal case, and his presidential security team essentially barricaded his residence and tried to prevent the authorities from coming in. And what happened is that the authorities came back with overwhelming force, and they executed the warrant and the jury team eventually gave up. And so what I am hoping is that a similar pattern would repeat itself if you attempt to defy the lawful decision of the court a second time and on a larger scale. Of course, the variable here is kind of the his supporters and there was some reporting in the morning paper today, I believe that there are actually kind of telegram groups where they are coordinating ways in which to essentially launch violent attacks in the event that they have a decision they don't like comes down.

That could introduce kind of a further wrench into this process. But, and I am a, and my only hope is that rule of law prevails. Thank you. My last question goes to Andre. When I talk about these martial law debacle, a lot of the questions that I get asked is, why is North Korea so quiet and patient looking at all the turmoil in South Korea? You mentioned that they are indifferent, but changing the question perspective a little bit, what were the possible chances of, you know, what were the cases that North Korea could have sort

of taken an opportunity using the time of like lack of chain of command and military, you know, vacuum and so on and so forth, then why didn't they do it? First of all, they lost hope for South Korean revolution. Kim Jong-un does not really want South Korean revolution. I mean communist revolution or left nationalist revolution, and he doesn't believe that such revolution is possible. And he is absolutely correct. Unlike his father, especially his grandfather who spent all his life dreaming about the red banner of the soul. Number one. Number two, in the long run, really long run, probably they are still dreaming about a military conquest of the South, judging by their military build-up. But right now they are not ready, because yes, South Korea was pretty much helpless to some extent, but they could not exploit it from the military point of view, because few exchanges of fire or even taking an island or two will not change

anything. And they are already for a serious large scale invasion of South Korea, and they are likely to be ready for many years to come. And on top of that, they had China and Russia behind them. And both countries would be unhappy about any kind of serious crisis here. Thank you. Wrapping up now, Chiu Min and Andrea, what do you think is the most ideal scenario among the five, not four, that we discussed so far from your point of view? Just very quickly, the most ideal one. I suppose the ideal scenario is impeachment and then an election where someone gets elected in a normal manner. And-

Oh, you're shying away. And the population accepting the results of that election. And that's more likely if certain people get elected than others, but one can dream. Got it, Andrei? Completely agree with Chumin. Personally, I can afford not to be cautious. I would say I probably would like

to see Democratic Party back in power, even though I have a lot of reservation about each of them personally. But whoever is elected, what is important is for this person to be accepted as a legally elected president of the Republic of Korea. And those who are not happy should just wait for the next elections for the next vote. And I hope it's definitely the best scenario and I hope to see it because any other scenario is highly dangerous for at least 51 million people living in the Republic of Korea. Thank you very much and here is hoping for the best. you