SEOUL, South Korea — With major questions hovering over the incoming U.S. administration’s Asia policy, senior Japanese figures are rushing to woo President-elect Donald Trump, while South Korea officials, trapped in a national impeachment drama, are largely unable to act.
In a region where China, North Korea and Russia meet, fellow democracies Japan and South Korea have separate defense treaties with Washington. In his previous term in the White House, Mr. Trump pressured both to pay more to host the thousands of U.S. troops on their territory.
And a new leader in the White House is not the only uncertainty factor in the region. There is rising disquiet in Japan over future relations with Seoul following the shocking downfall of impeached South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol this month, while China has weighed in with its own attack on the beleaguered South Korean president, who could be removed from office in the coming months.
South Korea and Japan are also export powerhouses that routinely run trade surpluses with the United States, and both could be in the crosshairs of the Trump team’s planned tariffs and protectionist trade moves. Both countries are also key nodes in global tech and shipbuilding supply chains.
These factors suggest that Seoul and Tokyo could benefit from speaking to the incoming administration with a united voice. Under Mr. Yoon that looked possible: His central foreign policy initiative was upgrading long-strained relations with Tokyo.
But now Mr. Yoon has been sidelined and a public opinion survey in Japan on Sunday found that 73.4 percent of respondents were worried that his impeachment would hurt bilateral relations.
If his impeachment is upheld, South Korea’s leftist opposition will likely form the next administration and reverse many of Mr. Yoon’s policies. The process of a court review of impeachment, followed by a potential presidential election, could take over eight months. During that time, a caretaker administration will run the country, but major policy shifts are highly unlikely.
Calling Trump
While the official Japanese government has had little luck connecting to Mr. Trump through official channels during the transition, the president-elect has been receiving a number of leading private Japanese representatives, with a first fruit of that outreach expected to be revealed Monday.
Shigeru Ishiba, Japan’s prime minister has not yet met Mr. Trump, though he had hoped to do so following a trip to South America last month. However, Mr. Trump and his wife on Sunday welcomed a high-profile Japanese guest to Mar-a-Lago, Akie Abe.
Ms. Abe is the widow of the late Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who was assassinated in 2022. Mr. Abe, a shrewd political operator and long-time powerbroker in Mr. Ishiba’s Liberal Democratic Party, made a point of being the first foreign leader to meet with the then-president elect at Trump Tower in late 2016, presenting Mr. Trump with a gold-plated golf club, and establishing a chummy relationship that extended from the golf links to global conference chambers.
Though Ms. Abe’s visit — made public via a Tweet from Melania Trump — was widely reported in the Japanese media, it is unclear if she had any foreign policy mission.
On Monday, Mr. Trump is expected to greet another senior Japanese figure at Mar-a Lago, this one a top representative from Japan, Inc.
SoftBank Group CEO Masayoshi Son has traveled to Mar-a-Lago to announce a $100 billion investment into U.S. projects over the next four years. The projects will create 100,000 jobs centered around artificial intelligence and related infrastructure, sources told CNBC.
The two men have teamed up before, in 2016, when Mr. Son announced the Japanese financial and technology giant would invest $50 billion in the U.S. to create 50,000 jobs.The announcement comes after Mr. Trump vowed that anyone investing $1 billion in the U.S. “will receive fully expedited approvals and permits, including, but in no way limited to, all environmental approvals.”
“Get ready to rock!!!” the Truth Social post said last week.
Seoul’s diplomatic woes
Meanwhile, the new head of the caretaker government in Seoul, Prime Minister Han Duck-soo, held telephone talks with President Joe Biden over the weekend, the White House said in a statement.
Mr. Biden was said to have discussed “the resiliency of democracy and the rule of law” in South Korea and “expressed his confidence” in the bilateral alliance.
But South Korean foreign affairs officials – whose own employment future is uncertain – have been unable to establish relationships with Trump’s people, leaving Seoul, like Tokyo, relying on unofficial outreach to the new American team.
Foreign Minister Cho Tae-yul told the South Korean National Assembly Monday, “We may need to boost out network and communication with President-elect Trump’s team by leveraging our private-sector connections and resources.”
While Tokyo and Seoul consider their outreach to Washington and their own bilateral relations, China stands to benefit from Mr. Yoon’s downfall.
Among the complaints in his televised address last week, Mr. Yoon claimed that Chinese nationals had engaged in espionage in South Korea, but that no legal mechanisms existed to arrest them.
He further alleged that the opposition, which controls the National Assembly, had voted down motions to correct this oversight.
China responded almost immediately.
“We are deeply surprised and dissatisfied with the remarks made by the South Korean side,” said Mao Ning, Beijing Foreign Ministry’s spokeswoman, South Korea’s Yonhap news agency reported. She added, “We firmly oppose the South Korean side linking its internal issues with factors related to China, making up false charges of so-called Chinese spies, and disgracing normal economic and trade cooperation.”
The opposition Democratic Party of Korea has long made clear its dissatisfaction with Mr. Yoon’s pro-Japan, pro-U.S. foreign policy and has supported better relations with Beijing. DPK head and former presidential candidate Lee Jae-myung has addressed rallies criticizing Mr. Yoon’s outreach to Japan and met with China’s ambassador to South Korea.
One of the party’s major foreign policy thinkers, former diplomat Wi Sung-rac, has suggested that Mr. Yoon’s foreign policy has shifted too far toward Washington, and too far away from Beijing.
“Imagine the U.S. at 3 o’clock and China at 9 o’clock,” he said told reporters in May. “Ideally, South Korea should be positioned around 1:30 p.m.”
• Mallory Wilson contributed to this story from Washington.
• Andrew Salmon can be reached at asalmon@washingtontimes.com.