The president-elect, Moon Jae-in, has advocated a more dovish approach to North Korea.
MOON JAE-IN, who easily won South Korea’s presidential election Tuesday, was the beneficiary of another popular backlash against a ruling establishment perceived as corrupt and out of touch. Already unhappy with a slowing economy and shrinking opportunities for the young, South Koreans took to the streets by the hundreds of thousands last year when President Park Geun-hye was accused of conspiring with a friend to extort bribes from the country’s big conglomerates. After Ms. Park was impeached and jailed, Mr. Moon, a leftist former human rights lawyer who lost to her in the last presidential election, was the obvious alternative. His promises to boost government hiring, tighten regulation of the big companies and conduct a more modest and open presidency are a natural response to the mood of dissatisfaction.
Yet if Mr. Moon’s ascent can be described as a triumph for South Korea’s young democracy, it may pose a challenge to an already wobbly U. S. position in Asia. President Trump has made the denuclearization of North Korea a top priority of his new administration, pursuing — sometimes erratically — a strategy of sharply raising the pressure on the regime of Kim Jong Un while holding out the prospect of negotiations. Mr. Moon has advocated a more dovish approach — and he has expressed unhappiness with what looked like a U. S. race to put a new missile defense system, the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) , in place before the election took place.
The hurried deployment of the THAAD batteries last month, literally in the middle of the night, “lacked democratic procedure, ” Mr.
