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What to Expect from the First Moon-Trump Summit

<p>South Korean President Moon Jae-in attends an interview with Reuters at the Presidential Blue House in Seoul, South Korea.</p>
South Korean President Moon Jae-in attends an interview with Reuters at the Presidential Blue House in Seoul, South Korea. Kim Hong-Ji/Reuters

By experts and staff

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By

  • Scott A. Snyder
    Senior Fellow for Korea Studies and Director of the Program on U.S.-Korea Policy

The following is an excerpt from a piece published on The National Bureau of Asian Research.

 

South Korea’s newly elected progressive president Moon Jae-in was swept into office six weeks ago on a domestic anticorruption agenda and pledges of dialogue with North Korea, following a bribery scandal that led to the impeachment of his predecessor. While piecing together a new cabinet, Moon has faced an unremittingly steep learning curve in foreign policy: North Korea has challenged his offers of dialogue by conducting a series of missile tests in the weeks following his election, and he faces conflicting pressures between Beijing and Washington over the deployment of the Terminal High Altitude Air Defense (THAAD) system. Now Moon faces his most consequential foreign policy challenge: the task of working with the Trump administration to ensure the continued smooth management of the security alliance between the United States and the Republic of Korea (ROK).

 

Read the full piece here.