 East here on Think Tech. My name is Steven Zercher. I'm the host for the show today. Welcome. Look forward to your comments and questions over the next half hour or so. The topic for this presentation, following from shows that we've done over the last month or so, is taking a look at the Asian response to the Biden election. So we're very fortunate today to have an expert when it comes to the Koreas. I want to introduce to you Dr. Busan Chang. He is also, like I am, a professor at Kansai Gaida University. Before he began teaching at Kansai Gaida University, he worked for the RAND Institute for a number of years, and he was a nuclear security fellow at that time. Before that, he worked at Stanford, where he was a fellow in contemporary Asia, and before that, which is, I think, very, very applicable to our discussion today, he was for many years in the foreign service in South Korea, for South Korea, and working on North Korea, South Korea dialogue, and so forth. So a very interesting background, very experienced person for us to discuss what will happen perhaps over the next four years from a Korean perspective with the election of Biden. Dr. Chang's background in education, he has a PhD from John Hopkins University, also at MA, focusing on international studies, international politics, and his undergraduate work was done at Seoul National University, which if you don't know, is the very best university in South Korea. So Dr. Chang, thank you so much for waking up early on this morning and joining me for this discussion about how the Koreas are looking at this Biden election. I know we're really early, we're still president-elect Biden, but we've looked at the South Asian response in the last show, had a professor from Europe taking a look at the response as well. So this is a continuation of a theme that we have, taking a look at how Asia is responding to this pretty dramatic change from the Trump administration over to the Biden administration starting in January next year. So before we dive into the actual topic, which is the response, I'd like to talk a little bit about your impressions of how things have gone over the last four years or so under the Trump administration, how it has affected Korea-U.S. relationships, both from a South Korea perspective and North Korea perspective. And from there, once we set that background, I'd like to talk more about what you think will happen over the next four years with the incoming Biden administration. So things that I read in terms of what's happened over the last four years, certainly Trump going to North Korea, that for the first president ever to set foot in North Korean territory, that was a dramatic meeting. I don't know how much impact that was over the long run, but those are some of the things that I think influenced the relationship between the United States and both Koreas under the Trump administration. Anyway, what are your thoughts about what's happened over the last four years or so in terms of Korea's response to the Trump administration? First of all, thank you, Steve. And thank you for having me on this show. And I think it's really timely because now it is becoming more and more clear to everyone on both sides of the Pacific Ocean that it's going to be Joe Biden that is going to be the president of the United States of America. And it is a right time to think about what's going to be the response from both Koreas, North and South Koreas, to the foreign policy of the new administration in Washington, D.C. And the first question is my take on what happened over the past four years. Yes, if you don't mind just giving a very short summary so we can set the background. Obviously, we're going to go through a change here between the Trump administration and the Biden administration from a conservative administration to more maybe center left administration. But before we talk about that, I just like to get your impressions as to what's happened over the last four years under the Trump administration in terms of the Korean-United States relationship, both from North Korea and South Korea perspective. Okay, so from the South Korean perspective, the Trump administration and President Trump's foreign policy in Asia was both boon and burden because from one perspective, it was benefits and an opportunity for the Moon Jae-in administration because the main goal, the main objective of the Moon administration was to have a better relationship with North Korea and ending this the armistice agreement in the Korean Peninsula. And for that purpose of Donald Trump's, President Trump's foreign policy style and his attitude was, I should say, helpful and it contributed to the Moon administration foreign policy. On the other hand, the bilateral relationship between South Korea and the Trump administration was in some sense rocky. For example, the burden sharing agreement was not accomplished yet. So it has both sides for the Moon administration. The President Trump's foreign policy had both two effects at the same time. I see. Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah, I was reading that the negotiations for the sharing of the costs of having the U.S. military in South Korea is still continuing, which even during this lame duck period between when the election has occurred and Biden will be coming in. And then from North Korea's perspective, the fact that President Trump actually visited. I remember initially there was very strong tension between the United States and North Korea and there was name calling and Rocket Man, which is the tagline that we're using for the show. But then in the end, Trump ended up visiting there, which gave a tremendous political boost to the North Korean administration. I would think politically that the President would actually go to North Korea and meet in person there. But now it's the last maybe six to 12 months, it doesn't seem like anything's happening at all. It's been kind of quiet, at least from a layman's perspective. What are your impressions in terms of the Trump administration and the relationship with North Korea? The summit diplomacy always receives a lot of attention. However, the summit diplomacy for a summit diplomacy to produce the meaningful outcomes, there needs to be prior consultations and negotiations at the working level. But the three summit meetings between President Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un did not have such working level consultations sufficiently. And then they just met because the both sides agreed upon the one thing, because Kim Jong-un wanted to have this aura of becoming a legitimate leader that is recognized by the United States. And also, I think that President Trump wanted to have this big show, almost like a reality show, to get the attention from the word media. However, when it comes to the actual outcomes in terms of the de-nuclearization of North Korea, there was not much accomplishment. And that is the main reason why the summit diplomacy between North Korea and the United States of America did not make much progress. And I don't think there is going to be any more such attempt at summit diplomacy after the Biden administration comes in. Because now it is not just the Republican government, but also the experts on the Democratic side, they believe that the summit diplomacy Trump style will not work. Okay. All right, great. So let's go ahead and launch into that. You're beginning to address it already. So as the Biden administration moves into power, I'm hearing rumors about who the ambassador will be to Japan. I haven't heard anything about who it would be for South Korea. But I think that we can expect that what historically was the Obama strategy in approaching Asia to some degree will be echoed in the Biden administration. It does seem like Biden is selecting Obama leaders to fill key positions within the administration on economics and communication and so forth. So we don't know who he's going to pick for Asia yet. I guess we're kind of lower on the pecking order in terms of who gets picked. But given that presumption that maybe as you pointed out, this kind of direct strategic negotiation such as it was, more publicity sounds like than it was actually real content, that will probably not continue under the Biden administration and a multilateral approach will occur. So what's your sense about how North Korea will respond to that and then also how South Korea will respond to that? So what is the impact of the Biden administration do you think on the Koreas looking forward? I think the first of all, we need to think about the difference between Biden administration and Trump administration. I think there will be basically two things, two differences between the two administration. First of all, Donald Trump emphasized the national interest as defined in terms of economic terms, economic interest. And President Trump wanted to accomplish that goal basically through the bilateral matters. On the other hand, I think that in the Biden administration, the values, the traditional values that were espoused by the U.S. administrations like freedom, human rights, democracy, we'll come back to the four and we'll work as a kind of guidelines for the Biden foreign policy. And also, second thing is that unilateralism was a key word in the Donald Trump administration. On the other hand, in the Biden administration, it's going to be more multilateral. The approach will be multilateralism that is based on the traditional allies and the friends of the United States of America. So the multilateralism based on values will be the keyword in the Biden administration, and that is going to be the main difference between the two administrations. So how do you think North Korea will respond to that strategy? I think as you pointed out in your description earlier, North Korea benefited from this unilateral approach in that Kim Jong-un was put on the international stage and was validated by the president visiting with him several times. That will probably not occur. The negotiations with North Korea, as they were under the Obama administration, involved, what was it, Busan? There were six different parties that were involved in the negotiations with North Korea, if I remember correctly. It was all done multilaterally, even though North Korea didn't want to do that. So if we return to that strategy, as you're indicating, that it is multilateral, the United States doesn't meet with North Korea independently. It always is in conjunction with South Korea and Japan and perhaps other countries as well. How will North Korea respond to that, do you think? I think that the Biden administration's foreign policy toward North Korea, I mean, the coming of the Biden administration will be, we don't know for sure yet, what's going to be the actual concrete foreign policy of the President Biden. It is based on the speculation, it is likely that it's going to be a nightmare for North Korean leader Kim Jong-un. First of all, I think that in the Biden administration, North Korea is not going to be a top priority or as important as it was regarded as by the Trump administration because there are much more important stuff. For example, the COVID-19, the response to the COVID-19 crisis will be the first priority and only the restoration of the U.S. economy that was damaged by the COVID will be the top priority and the next thing will be probably China on the foreign policy agenda of the Biden administration. So probably North Korea will be a second or third priority, even on the foreign policy agenda of the Biden administration. And also, as I just mentioned, values will come out to the fore again, all the way come back to the fore, like freedom, human rights or the democracy. And North Korea doesn't have any of that. So the problem is, even when North Korea wants to have these negotiations all again about the North Korea's nuclear weapons with the Biden administration, what is on the agenda is not just nuclear weapons alone. Biden would want to talk about other stuff that is including like freedom, democracy, human rights situation in North Korea. And that is something that North Korea dislikes the most. They don't want to talk about them. I mentioned the multilateralism, but the multilateralism that is going to be sought after by the Biden administration is not going to be the kind of multilateralism that we could see during the Six-Party Talks era, which I participated in as a member. So how is that going to be different in your view? Because in my opinion, multilateralism in the Biden administration is going to be more exclusive, which is focusing more on its own traditional allies and friends. So therefore, the first priority will not be a multilateral talk that includes China, Russia, or North Korea, but more on the restoration of the trilateral cooperation among the United States, Japan, and South Korea in the first place. And that if that works, based on that trilateral cooperation, that Biden will try to launch into the Asian continent having talks with the China and North Korea. That's going to be the form of a multilateralism in the Biden administration, in my opinion. That's an interesting perspective. It's kind of, if I can translate that into my own layman's mind here, it sounds like the Biden administration has to re-establish the basics after four years of a pretty dramatic departure from traditional international diplomacy strategy by the United States, not just in Asia, but in worldwide. So what you're saying is that Biden will focus on re-establishing the negotiations and the common standards between Japan, South Korea, and the United States. And then once that's established, then move on to facing issues having to do with North Korea or China's security issues as well. Wow. I think that's a very interesting point and probably what will happen. So that's a comment in a way that things have kind of for the last four years. It's like no one's mowed the lawn and the weeds have all grown up. And the first thing you need to do in order to fix the lawn is to get rid of the weeds and get back to what was supposedly a normal policy, which had occurred for decades under Republican and Democratic administrations before we went through the four years of Trump. That's exactly what I'm talking about. The reason I have such a speculation is that the garden you have at your home is not exactly the same garden you had four years ago. Oh yeah. Very clear. For example, the big picture in Asia now, East Asia is the rival between China and the United States of America. That is more serious now than four years ago during the Obama administration. That's definitely something I wanted to talk about because the clearly the economic influence and the political influence of China today is much stronger than it was four years ago or eight years ago. It's remarkable how much progress China has made in terms of influence. But before we address that, I do want to talk about that. Can you also take a look at South Korea, maybe some of the things that you talked about having to do with the strategy with North Korea apply also to South Korea? This multilateralism, for example, this effort to try and create a more normal, standard, stable economic and political relationships between the three main countries of the United States, Japan, and Korea in North Asia. Is it pretty much the same or are there unique opportunities that maybe South Korea has or unique challenges that South Korea will have under the Biden administration? You told us already that under Trump, there were some benefits internationally, but also domestically there were some difficult challenges as well. So maybe under Biden it will be the same. There will be some good things and some bad things. But what's your take on South Korea's perspective right now? According to my reading of Moon Jae-in administration's foreign policy, I think that probably President Moon and his advisors might have hoped Donald Trump be re-elected because it is not because they like Donald Trump in person, but because according to the strategy that was agreed upon between the Moon administration and the Donald administration, they have already invested a lot of political capital for that strategy. For example, the summit diplomacy between North Korea and the United States. However, if the Biden comes in as the president, then it means that all those political capital that had been invested by the Moon administration will be useless, will be wasted. That means President Moon now has to come up with the totally new foreign policy strategy that is agreeable in the eyes of the Biden administration. I think that probably there is a lot of disappointment or dismay when they knew that it's going to be the Biden, not Trump, the next president of the United States of America. The reason I believe, the reason I have such a speculation about Moon's foreign policy the line is that it is based on Moon administration's understanding of the situation in the Korean peninsula. Basically, they believe that what is at the heart of the problem of the so-called Korean problem is this antagonism, this long-time antagonism between the United States and North Korea. Therefore, their solution is to find the friendship between the United States and North Korea and that is going to be the solution. According to the interpretation of the Moon, President Moon and his advisors. That was the reason why they wanted to have the direct one-on-one summit meeting between the president of the United States and an old current leader, Kim Jong-un. However, that didn't work. That didn't work because that is actually not the fundamental problem that is there in the Korean problem because the fundamental problem there is North Korea is developing nuclear weapons because they feel this threat not just from the United States of America but also from South Korea. The very existence of South Korea that is much larger in terms of the population as well as the economy that is right below the 38 parallel and which has the same language and the same culture is a fundamental threat to the very existence of North Korea. The reason why they feared the United States of America is not just because U.S. has a lot of military power but because the United States that is the large economy and large military is siding with South Korea which is the fundamental and existential threat to the North Korea. Therefore, so this strategy of breaching or giving a conversation opportunity for conversation between the United States and North Korea that was implemented by the Moon administration probably will not work any longer. Thank you very much for that explanation. Very very interesting. Now let's address what you were talking about earlier and that's the fact that the world, the economic balance, the political balance, basically the whole picture in North Asia is dramatically different than today than it was four years ago and this is in conjunction with the rise of China. So I was just reading and preparing for this show the United States has always been the largest consumer market in the world so therefore Japan, Korea, all of the Southeast Asian countries look to the United States as an economic savior in a way and you know Americans were continuing to consume products that were manufactured in China and other locations in Asia but under the G administration domestic consumption has been stimulated through government policy and I was surprised to read that the Chinese domestic consumption of foreign goods is now 90 percent of the United States so China will probably not too long from now be the largest consumer market for imported goods in the world will overtake the United States so that influences dramatically political relationships with Asian countries they no longer need to look to the United States for their economic salvation right we need to export to the United States in order to have a successful economy in our country that's been the strategy from what World War II on now China's economic power is so strong for South Korea the number one trading partner correct me if I'm wrong is China for Japan the number one trading partner is China and probably for every country in Asia right now the number one trading partner is China so I agree with you that the Biden's challenge in terms of establishing even the modest goal that you were talking about of creating stability with Japan South Korea and the United States Japan and South Korea are dependent now on Chinese markets right for their goods so it's not as easy as it would have been eight years or four years ago to accomplish even that modest goal what is your impression there how how deeply influential now has China become vis-a-vis the United States are is it in your mind is it equal is the is China and the United States on an equal basis as you said China is the number one trading partner of South Korea and also China is the number one trading partner of Japan and more and more increasingly more and more South Koreans and Japanese are thinking that they they they need to put more emphasis on the importance of the Chinese market and also it is not just the market you know actually it is true that the China is kind of a working as a black hole of the economic interest in South Korea as well as Japan however at the same time their investment foreign direct investment into South Korea and Japan are also on the rise which means that more and more technology at these companies that are doing the operations in South Korea and Japan are also being purchased by the Chinese companies that have this purchasing power however the problem is South Korea as well as Japan both countries are established democracies they have the basic values that are like freedom and human rights that are shared by the shared with the United States of America and China does not have elections and they have these all sorts of problems related to the freedom and human rights and they have a Tibet and Xinjiang issue and also it is becoming more and more serious as we observe in Hong Kong so that is posing I think that is posing a great challenge even even when you know that your economic transactions and investment relationship with China are becoming more and more important for your own national interest can you still continue this relationship with China knowing that your values are more and more contradictory with the values that they have in the China Chinese mainland and China is becoming more proactive in in trying to advertising or trying to sell their values abroad for example they say that they can establish their own values so-called the socialism with China's characteristic and what they are doing in Hong Kong seems to me that they are trying to set up their own political systems and as a kind of another model that is competing with the so-called the American model that is democracy based on human rights so that is going to be posing a great fundamental challenge for both China and South Korea. You know we've run out of time and I've only asked half the questions I wanted to ask you this has been so interesting thank you so much for doing this really appreciate it we obviously have to do this again maybe after the Biden administration comes into power we can take a look at the early response and so forth and strategies as they're deployed but thank you so much I wish we could continue for another half an hour to talk today but let's let's do this in the future after the Biden administration actually is in place really appreciate it thank you for our viewers thank you think tech folks I'll be back on in a couple of weeks we'll be looking to the east again so thank you so much to Busan thank you Dr. Chang for doing this I really appreciate it thanks for having me thank you you're very welcome bye bye everyone