When he takes over from departing President Moon Jae-in, South Korea’s newly elected president Yoon Suk-yeol, a conservative anti-feminist opposition figure dubbed the “South Korean Donald Trump,” will confront a slew of obstacles, including the North Korean situation.
Yoon Suk-yeol, a 61-year-old former prosecutor and political neophyte with little experience in foreign affairs, won by a razor-thin margin of 0.8 percentage points or 263,000 votes in a battle unlike any other in the country.
According to The Independent, his triumph signified the conservatives return to power after five years in opposition, and it put a stop to his left-liberal opponent Lee Jae-Myung’s aspirations.
In his first broadcast address on Thursday morning, the new president promised to take a firmer position against North Korea’s “illicit” and “unreasonable” provocations. North Korea has been launching missiles since the start of the year.
Analysts believe that Yoon Suk-yeol’s combative tone would provide Kim Jong Un with a springboard to further increase tensions between the two nations, and that his foreign policy will be challenged by South Korea’s nuclear-armed neighbor.
According to Barbara Kelemen, a geopolitical analyst with security intelligence firm Dragonfly, the US expects North Korea to conduct nuclear and intercontinental ballistic missile tests by the end of 2022, despite UN sanctions prohibiting such activities.
Why Yoon Suk-yeol is called South Korea’s Trump?
Yoon Suk-yeol “is like Trump” in some ways, according to Kim Hyung-joon, a political scientist in Seoul, because of his political uniqueness, conservative animosity at his Democratic predecessor, and voters’ lack of trust in the present People Power Party leadership.
By attacking his predecessor’s progressive gender policy and condemning feminism, Yoon Suk-yeol garnered a particularly large group of support from males in their 20s and 30s.
Both Trump and Yoon “have made statements that would be offensive to other nations, lauded extremely problematic political personalities, gone after foreigners, and had a weak knowledge of feminism,” according to the Korea Herald.
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