Seoul and Washington are quietly hiring their divorce lawyers

For the first time since 1945, the two heads-of-state of the United States and South Korea would both prefer to end their two states’ alliance. Because the alliance is popular with South Korean voters, Lee Jae-myung would deny that publicly. Privately, he wants to preserve the fiction of one, to wind it down slowly, and failing that, to evade blame for the coming divorce.

Trump has no such qualms. In terms of diplomacy and policy, however, the US and ROK have had an intermittent alliance for 20-plus years. The planes still sit in the hangars at Osan, but the two states have only intermittently agreed what they’re defending against or which way they would fly in a war, or if they would fly at all.

Expect Kim Jong-un and Xi Jinping to try to wedge the policy differences between Lee and Trump, to sideline and isolate Seoul. If I’m right about this, we can expect to see more of these predictions fulfilled.

In any event, if you simply remove Lee’s own corruption and deceit from the equation, the result of South Korea’s election was perfectly understandable. When the leader of a country tries to impose his will through force and violence after he fails to achieve it through a democratic process, that leader’s party deserves extinction-level punishment at the polls. Congratulations to South Koreans for vindicating that principle. And perhaps save a word of condolence for the dissenting voters of another once-great democracy that didn’t.