CARLA SANDS And BART MARCOIS: U.S.-South Korea Summit Offers Clear Choice To Korea

Originally published on the Daily Caller

President Trump is due to meet South Korean President Lee Jae Myung on Aug. 25. President Trump’s agenda for the meeting is quite clear: iron out the details of the sweeping trade agreement signed last month, determine cost sharing and wartime operational control for U.S. and Korean forces, and plan how best to counter Chinese influence. President Trump is focused on bringing economic growth and prosperity to America and to our trading partners.

President Lee’s agenda is not as clear. He comes from the hard Left of the Korean political spectrum and seems more intent on helping the North Korean economy than defending against a potential North Korean attack. He also is not sure whether he’s on China’s side or ours. Lee might make the very dangerous mistake of thinking he can ‘play’ President Trump.

Lee was elected in June with a strong majority in the parliament. Heady with the wine of near-absolute control, they are behaving like an old-style Communist government. They have imprisoned former President Yoon, threatening life imprisonment and even execution. Last week, prison guards injured the former president by rough handling, and he required hospital care. Recently the government also arrested Yoon’s wife, charging her with corruption.

The Lee government is muzzling prominent American critics of his human rights policies, like Amb. Morse Tan, and oppressing Koreans who meet him. That is a mistake: Tan was appointed by President Trump in his first term, and Trump is likely to pay attention to the treatment of his former emissary. Lee’s police forces have summoned Christian church leaders and subjected them to investigation just for meeting with Amb. Tan.

Meanwhile, Lee’s party, the Democratic Party, has just elected Jung Chung Rae as party chairman. Rae was convicted in 1989 of breaking into the U.S. ambassador’s residence and bombing it. He was sentenced to four years in prison. Before that he was arrested for distributing leaflets supporting the North Korean self-reliance philosophy called ‘juche.’ Jung is so far Left that he was barred from entering the U.S., even by the Obama Administration. But in the early 2000’s he worked with now-President Lee to establish a Leftist political movement, and he’s the man Lee backed to be chairman of the party.

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