OPINION:
Recently, South Korean President Lee clumsily declared that “Korea and the United States are the most important partners supporting each other’s growth.”
Unfortunately, although Mr. Lee has attempted to pay lip service to South Korea’s current alliance with America, it’s clear that the country’s historic relationship with the U.S. has eroded dramatically.
President Lee’s DPK government is now an open orifice of anti-American ideology and the politics of China.
Since the start of his political career, Mr. Lee has remained an avidly anti-American political actor. In 2021, he called all of America’s military personnel in South Korea an “occupying force.” He also claims that the United States aided Japan in a ’forced’ annexation of Korea and blames America for maintaining the Japanese colonization of Korea.
That same year, he said: “Pro-Japanese collaborators worked with U.S. occupying forces to maintain the same ruling structure [as the colonial period]. We did not establish a state with a clean start. We were unable to purify the country of its pro-Japanese remnants, and they remain to this day.”
Mr. Lee’s DPK government has consistently undermined and abandoned the U.S.-South Korea military alliance. The U.S. has been forced to suspend vital intel sharing with South Korea because the Lee government publicly identified a classified “North Korean nuclear site.”
The government recently conducted an illicit raid on Osan Air Base, during which it wrongfully seized confidential data and information about the U.S. Air Force’s U-2 surveillance planes.
Mr. Lee has also refused to support America’s Operation Epic Fury in the Middle East. Instead, the government has sent aid to Iran. The Trump administration to repeatedly slammed Mr. Lee’s shameful military inaction and admonished South Korea to “join the mission!”
The DPK government has actively persecuted American businesses in South Korea, too. For example, titans of industry, such as Meta and Coupang, the “Amazon of South Korea,” have been continuously targeted and baselessly attacked by the Lee regime. The government has even attempted to persecute and boycott one of the icons of modern Americana, Starbucks, as punishment for an ad campaign that disparaged a 1980 uprising.
Mr. Trump has condemned the Lee government’s callous treatment of American industry and its utter failure to “liv[e] up to its Deal with the United States.” More than 50 members of Congress recently lambasted the South Korean government for its ties to China, calling the repercussions of such a close alliance sizable.
Indeed, Mr. Lee has publicly courted Chinese President Xi Jinping and transformed South Korea into a repository for the national interests of Beijing. He has eagerly embraced vulgar, pro-China policies, and his administration has punished any anti-China or anti-communist discourse.
Worse still, South Korea’s 2025 elections were marred by claims of fraud and foreign interference by China. Morse Tan, former U.S. ambassador at large for global criminal justice, warned recently that South Korea “now faces a deepening crisis that threatens its constitutional integrity and the will of its people” and “South Korea as we know it is about to be lost.”
South Korea’s relationship with the U.S. now hangs from a thread that Mr. Lee and China are desperate to cut.
Mr. Lee may have recently attempted to ingratiate himself with President Trump to disguise the degenerate state of the South Korean nation and its damaged relationship with America, but one thing is apparent: Whenever President Lee opens his mouth, only Mr. Xi spills out.
• William Barclay is an award-winning political theorist, as well as one of Canada’s leading conservative voices. Twitter/X @WillBarclayPCBG.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.