S. Korea's Crucial June 3 Election: Could The U.S. Lose South Korea To Communist China?
On June 3, 2025, South Korea heads to the polls for the snap presidential elections, triggered by the impeachment of pro-U.S. conservative president Yoon Suk-yeol, who pursued economic decoupling from China.[1]
(Source: X)
David Eunkoo Kim To FOX News: This Election Is Widely Seen As A Pivotal Moment For South Korea
On June 1, 2025, David Eunkoo Kim, founder and representative of Truth Forum, a conservative youth organization founded at Seoul National University, gave an interview to FOX news about the crucial upcoming elections in South Korea.
David Eunkoo Kim, who works with MEMRI (See MEMRI Daily Brief No. 772, South Korea's Democrats, Crisis, And What The U.S. Must Know, by David Eunkoo Kim, May 16, 2025) said to FOX news: "This election is widely seen as a pivotal moment for South Korea because the stakes – both domestically and geopolitically – are extraordinarily high."[2]
Then, commenting about Lee Jae-myung, current Democratic Party of Korea (DPK) candidate at the June 3 presidential elections, David Eunkoo Kim added: "Throughout his political career, [Lee] has consistently aligned himself with both pro-North Korean and pro-Chinese agendas. He has been implicated in sending funds to North Korea in violation of U.N. sanctions, and his deference to China has been nothing short of submissive."
David Eunkoo Kim, founder and president of the Truth Forum
(See MEMRI Daily Brief No. 772, South Korea's Democrats, Crisis, And What The U.S. Must Know, by David Eunkoo Kim, May 16, 2025)
David Eunkoo Kim In The New York Sun: "The Leftist DPK Presidential Candidate Lee Jae-Myung Actively Advocates For Improving Relations With China"
In a recent article to the New York Sun, David Eunkoo Kim stressed: "The leftist DPK presidential candidate Lee Jae-myung actively advocates for improving relations with China and criticized the 'inequality' of the U.S.-South Korea alliance, making him a prominent pro-China politician. Lee advocates for 'autonomous and balanced diplomacy centered on national interests.' He even mentioned that, if elected, he would cancel the THAAD (American anti-ballistic missile defense system) deployment and take wartime operational control of South Korean forces. Lee embraces a dangerous revisionist interpretation of Korean history – one that casts doubt on the very legitimacy of the Republic itself, absolves the violent legacy of communism, and promotes anti-American resentment."[3]
David Eunkoo Kim then added: "The DPK's embrace of revisionist history has translated into real-world deference to authoritarian regimes, most notably China."
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Shafaq News
11 hours ago
- Shafaq News
Iran detains 22 over alleged Mossad links
Shafaq News/ Iranian security forces detained 22 individuals in Qom on charges of espionage for Israel's Mossad, Iranian state media reported on Saturday. Local outlets said the suspects were involved in intelligence operations on behalf of the Israeli agency. Notably, authorities earlier detained 54 alleged 'pro-Israel elements' in Khuzestan, 30 others in Hamadan, and a man in Tehran accused of transmitting coordinates of Iranian air defense sites to a foreign agency via WhatsApp. The arrests coincide with the ninth consecutive day of open conflict between Iran and Israel. Tehran has long accused Mossad of orchestrating assassinations, sabotage attacks, and cyber operations inside Iran.
Iraqi News
13 hours ago
- Iraqi News
Pro-Palestinian protest leader released from US custody
New York – Mahmoud Khalil, a former Columbia University student who was one of the most visible leaders of nationwide pro-Palestinian campus protests, was released Friday from a federal detention center. Khalil, a legal permanent resident in the United States who is married to a US citizen and has a US-born son, has been in custody since March facing potential deportation. 'This shouldn't have taken three months,' Khalil, wearing a Palestinian keffiyeh scarf, told US media outside an immigration detention center in Jena, Louisiana hours after a federal judge ordered his release. '(President Donald) Trump and his administration, they chose the wrong person for this,' he said. 'There's no right person who should be detained for actually protesting a genocide.' The Department of Homeland Security criticized District Judge Michael Farbiarz's ruling Friday as an example of how 'out of control members of the judicial branch are undermining our national security.' Under the terms of his release, Khalil will not be allowed to leave the United States except for 'self-deportation,' and faces restrictions on where he can travel within the country. Khalil's wife, Michigan-born dentist Noor Abdalla, said her family could now 'finally breathe a sigh of relief and know that Maumoud is on his way home.' 'We know this ruling does not begin to address the injustices the Trump administration has brought upon our family and so many others the government is trying to silence for speaking out against Israel's ongoing genocide against Palestinians,' added Abdalla, who gave birth to the couple's first child while her husband was in detention. – Visas revoked – Since his March 8 arrest by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, Khalil has become a symbol of Trump's campaign to stifle pro-Palestinian student activism against the Gaza war, in the name of curbing anti-Semitism. At the time a graduate student at Columbia University in New York, Khalil was a prominent leader of nationwide campus protests against Israel's war in Gaza. Following his arrest, US authorities transferred Khalil, who was born in Syria to Palestinian parents, nearly 2,000 kilometers (1,242 miles) from his home in New York to the detention center in Louisiana, pending deportation. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has invoked a law approved during the 1950s Red Scare that allows the United States to remove foreigners seen as adverse to US foreign policy. Rubio argues that US constitutional protections of free speech do not apply to foreigners and that he alone can make decisions without judicial review. Hundreds of students have seen their visas revoked, with some saying they were targeted for everything from writing opinion articles to minor arrest records. Farbiarz ruled last week that the government could not detain or deport Khalil based on Rubio's assertions that his presence on US soil poses a national security threat. The government has also alleged as grounds to detain and deport Khalil that there were inaccuracies in his application for permanent residency. Amol Sinha, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of New Jersey, which is among the groups representing Khalil, welcomed the release order. 'This is an important step in vindicating Mr Khalil's rights as he continues to be unlawfully targeted by the federal government for his advocacy in support of Palestinian rights,' Sinha said.
Iraqi News
a day ago
- Iraqi News
Netanyahu's other battle: swinging Trump and US behind Iran war
Jerusalem – Since launching air strikes on Iran last week, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been working to pull President Donald Trump into the war, and sway a sceptical American public. In his daily calls and public statements, Israel's longest-serving prime minister has mixed praise and deference for the US leader, while also arguing that the strikes on Iran benefit Americans. 'Do you want these people to have nuclear weapons and the means to deliver them to you?' he asked during an interview on Fox News last Sunday. 'Today, it's Tel Aviv. Tomorrow, it's New York,' he told ABC News a day later, arguing that Iran was working on longer-range missiles that would be able to reach US shores in the future. His media blitz came after intensive and not always harmonious exchanges between Netanyahu and Trump this year, with the Israeli leader welcomed twice to the White House since the Republican's return to power in January. The New York Times, citing unnamed US administration sources, reported Tuesday that Netanyahu had asked Trump for US-made bunker-busting bombs capable of reaching Iran's underground Iranian nuclear facilities in an April meeting — but had been refused. Having been elected in opposition to US entanglements overseas and supposed 'war-mongers' in the Democratic party, Trump was seen as reluctant to commit Washington to another unpopular war in the Middle East. Much of his right-wing Make America Great Again (MAGA) coalition is staunchly anti-interventionist, including Vice President JD Vance, his head of national intelligence director Tulsi Gabbard, and influential media figures such as Steve Bannon and Tucker Carlson. But speaking Wednesday, the former tycoon stated clearly that he was considering joining the Israeli campaign directly, raising the possibility of the bunker-busting GBU-57 bombs being deployed against Iran's main underground uranium stockpile facility in Fordo. 'I may do it, I may not do it,' Trump told reporters at the White House when asked if he had decided on US air strikes. His final decision will come 'within the next two weeks', he said Thursday. – Influence – Yossi Mekelberg, a Middle East expert at the London-based Chatham House think-tank, said Netanyahu had been clever in his dealings with Trump, appealing to his 'vanity' with charm as well 'using his weaknesses'. Once he had received an 'amber light' in private from the US leader to launch the attacks last Friday, 'he knew Trump's personality and knew that Trump might come on board if there was a chance of claiming glory in some way or claiming some sort of credit,' he told AFP. Trump has openly praised the success of the Israeli military campaign which has combined targeted assassinations of key military personnel, destruction of Iran's air defences and repeated strikes on nuclear sites. Eliot A. Cohen, a veteran former US State Department advisor and international relations expert at Johns Hopkins University in Washington, cautioned against overstating Netanyahu's personal influence, however. 'I suspect this is much less about Netanyahu's influence than Trump's own view of the Iranian nuclear programme, his memory of the assassination plot against him in 2024 by Iranian agents and the success of the initial Israeli operations,' he told AFP. An Iranian man has been charged in connection with an alleged plot to kill Trump before his election last November. Cohen said Netanyahu's lobbying could succeed for several reasons. 'They are not asking for anything other than the bombing of Fordo,' he said, referring to the deeply buried underground uranium enrichment facility. 'Nobody is talking about an invasion or anything like that.' 'Many if not most Americans understand that a nuclear Iran is particularly dangerous, and that the regime is deeply hostile to the US,' he added. – Public opinion – A poll by the survey group YouGov for The Economist magazine conducted last weekend found half of Americans viewed Iran as an 'enemy' and another quarter said it was 'unfriendly.' But it found that only 16 percent of Americans 'think the US military should get involved in the conflict between Israel and Iran'. It found that majorities of Democrats (65 percent), independents (61 percent) and Republicans (53 percent) opposed military intervention. Speaking on his War Room podcast Wednesday, former Trump strategist Bannon seethed that Netanyahu had 'lectured' America and started a war he couldn't end on his own. 'Quit coming to us to finish it,' he said.
