South Korean president takes golf lessons to impress Trump

Yoon Suk Yeol sharpens his ‘sporting diplomacy’ skills ahead of any future talks about pressing issues with game-obsessed president-elect

South Korea’s president has picked up his golf clubs for the first time in eight years to impress Donald Trump in any future meeting.
Yoon Suk Yeol’s office said the president decided to practise his swing over the weekend as he seeks to work out how to “build a rapport” with a famously golf-obsessed US president-elect.
Analysts suggested the preparation for golf diplomacy was inspired by Shinzo Abe, the late Japanese prime minister whose close relationship with Mr Trump is said to have been achieved through several rounds of the game.
The incoming 47th US president played at least 260 rounds of golf over the course of his first term – or a round every 5.6 days, The Washington Post estimated in 2021.
Last week, Mr Yoon insisted that Mr Trump’s advisers told him that the pair will have “good chemistry” and that they had offered to help build ties.
Not only do South Korean companies rely heavily on trade with America, but the US has a huge military presence in the country – 28,500 troops are stationed there, part of the legacy of the Korean War.
This deployment could be under threat after Mr Trump regularly complained that the US-South Korean military exercises were much too costly during his first term.
During his 2020 election campaign, he threatened to “blow up” the alliance between the US and South Korea.
Two years earlier, Mr Trump declared that he and Kim Jong-un, the North Korean dictator, “fell in love”.
Experts have said that the Mr Trump could revive this warm relationship with Kim when he returns to the White House in January.
“Trump will likely try to resume his relationship with Kim in his second term,” Robert E Kelly, a professor of political science at Pusan National University in South Korea, wrote in a commentary in Channel News Asia.
“This sets up a situation where the United States favours a dictatorship over a treaty ally in its foreign policy. That would be a shift more remarkable than the coming abandonment of Ukraine, which is not a formal US ally.”
He added that without America’s backing, South Korea – which he said had a poor relationship with neighbouring Japan – would be fairly isolated on the global stage.
Yet Mr Yoon does not necessarily have the support or domestic approval ratings to publicly keep Mr Trump happy.
Instead, the country could see nuclear armament as its only guarantee of safety, Prof Kelly suggested.
“In short, if Trump will not fight for South Korea, and if he demands a huge protection fee too, then the argument for South Korea to go its own way grows dramatically,” he said.
“Indigenous nuclear weapons are the obvious replacement for a decaying US nuclear security commitment.”