# In Seoul, Trump is an opportunity In Korea, there’s an expression, _jeonhwawibok_ 전화위복 (轉禍爲福)—to turn misfortune into good fortune. In Seoul, Trump is bad news, but he’s also doing something years of debate could not: he’s providing the political drive to make long-term strategic change thinkable. People accustomed to an established way of doing things resist change, particularly when the threat remains conjectural. It is only with changed circumstances that the previously unthinkable, becomes thinkable, and even possible. South Korea’s relationship with the U.S. is in trouble. Logic and rationality once provided incredibly solid foundations in support of a close relationship. The logic and rationality has crumbled away, leaving only a stream of intertwined narratives that are now increasingly frayed and threadbare. As much as we can blame Trump, he’s only a precipitant—a catalyst, not the cause. For Korea, Trump is a challenge and also an incredible opportunity. **Trump as challenge** Trump has imposed a remarkable series of costs on South Korea. He has subjected Korean exports to sweeping tariffs despite KORUS, demanded vastly greater payments for US forces, pressured Seoul into hundreds of billions of dollars of investment in the United States, and overseen the detention of hundreds of Korean workers at a Hyundai-LG plant even as Washington demands more Korean manufacturing on American soil. The result is an alliance that has become more expensive economically, more demanding financially, and less predictable strategically. The current [Alaska LNG controversy](https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/6126997-trump-south-korea-alaska-lng/) captures the problem neatly. Trump announced that South Korea would invest more than $50 billion in the project, prompting Seoul to protest that the claim went “far beyond what was agreed.” Trump responded that if South Korea did not participate, “I’ll just charge them more.” The episode leaves the extraordinary impression of Washington deciding how Korean money will be spent before Seoul has agreed to spend it.  For younger Koreans, Trump has taken away opportunities to study and work, created a fearful environment for those already there, and with each investment project demand, drags away jobs that were once destined for graduating students. An alliance once sold to young Koreans as a source of opportunity increasingly looks like something being paid for with their own opportunities. **Trump as opportunity** Trump is also an opportunity. His disregard for convention and willingness to overturn established policy creates openings that more orthodox administrations would never contemplate. He already approved South Korea’s pursuit of nuclear-powered attack submarines, and has formally backed a process that could give Seoul civil uranium-enrichment and spent-fuel reprocessing capabilities. In February 2026, Foreign Minister Cho Hyun and U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright reaffirmed their commitment to making “[concrete progress](https://www.mofa.go.kr/eng/brd/m_5676/view.do?seq=323252)” on enrichment and reprocessing and agreed to pursue working-level consultations. Taken far enough, this loosening of longstanding nuclear constraints could eventually give South Korea a complete nuclear fuel cycle—and perhaps even create political space for a future South Korean nuclear deterrent. Trump’s disruption, in other words, cuts both ways: it weakens old certainties, but also removes old constraints. Trump is also useful to Lee Jae-myung personally. Lee has explicitly sought to exploit Trump’s unusual relationship with Kim Jong-un to reopen diplomacy with North Korea. At their September summit, Trump responded positively to Lee’s request that he help restart U.S.–North Korean dialogue, and the two agreed to remain in close communication on the issue. There is no guarantee Pyongyang will respond—so far it has not—but Trump potentially gives Lee something Seoul cannot manufacture for itself: a personal channel capable of bringing North Korea back to the table. Could Trump go further? If he is willing to overturn decades of nuclear orthodoxy, could he eventually accept a South Korean nuclear deterrent? If he increasingly regards the cost of defending allies as an American burden, could he support a genuinely armed and strategically independent South Korea—and ultimately the withdrawal of US forces from the peninsula? And if Seoul concluded that its security was better served by removing itself from great-power competition altogether, could Trump accept, or even formally recognize, a South Korean declaration of neutrality? None of these outcomes is even within the realm of US policy: Washington continues to reaffirm extended deterrence, the alliance, and the goal of denuclearization. Yet they are no longer entirely fanciful questions. Trump has already ordered joint exercises substantially reduced, has publicly emphasized the costs and risks of stationing American troops in Korea, and has declined to rule out force reductions when asked. The very unpredictability that makes Trump dangerous to the old alliance may therefore also make him unusually capable of consenting to a radically different relationship. An opportunity in the guise of a half-sucked mango seed.  **Trump as an inconsequential brain fart** Then there’s a more measured, darker alternative to consider. What Trump does, means absolutely nothing because he’s as incapable, out of his depth, and as confused as he is rude. Sure, he’ll feck things up, cause mayhem, make family money, and disrupt what was, but in the end, he’s inconsequential like every inane brain fart he squeezes out to mildly retarded syphilitic MAGA hangers on. He couldn’t bring back manufacturing, impose tariffs, end war in Ukraine, avoid war or end war in Iran, because behind him is a much more powerful force. Behind him lies the deep state—that festering gangrenous sore of largely hidden global elite that influence and control economic, political, foreign policy, and military decision-making. For them, South Korea is nothing but another geographic location in a global contest of control. South Korea is a strategic possession in contested territory at the point where maritime encroachment meets continental power. As Mahan, Mackinder, Spykman, and later Brzezinski highlighted, South Korea is just one of a long trail of states that make up the rimland to be controlled or denied in the great power maritime-continental contest. The Korean Peninsula is the dagger pointed at the Chinese industrial heartland, and the sword pointed at the Japanese archipelago. The Korean Peninsula is an invaluable strategic possession fought over for millennia and an essential geopolitical pivot in the contested balance of power of Northeast Asia. In such contests, Trump’s traveling real estate media circus means absolutely nothing. The deep state decides the future of geostrategic pivots. You never let such states go. You finance and support the opposition, fund and arm the more extreme elements, and ultimately encourage, press, and persuade individuals to act. It’s not so hard, it’s been done many times before—just read Lindsey O’Rourke’s _[Covert Regime Change: America’s Secret Cold War](https://academic.oup.com/cornell-scholarship-online/book/42677?login=false)_ (Cornell University Press, 2018). When it’s done really well, nobody participating in the tearing apart of their country even has a clue that they’re being manipulated. To the last soul, they’ll believe they’re just acting in the interests of the country. When at least half the elite are trained, rewarded, and connected to the instigator, such an operation would be a breeze, and given that preparing such ops takes time, is more than likely already well underway—just in case. Sometimes, you may even let [unexpected turns](https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/12/03/what-is-martial-law-south-korea/) run their course, just to see where it goes and gather further intel for a future ops. Brzezinski in his global strategic chessboard specifically details Ukraine, Azerbaijan, Iran, Turkey, and South Korea as centers of to be contested. Every one of them, except the last, has gone through CIA-inspired economic upheavals, revolutions, and conflicts. And that last one is the scariest. What you can’t control, you deny to the opposition. You destroy its utility—desecrate its ability to wage war, take away its technology and industry, and eviscerate its human resources. Leave it in such a state that control no longer has a meaning. Such a dark reading sheds light on Trump and his traveling real estate media circus. Could he be South Korea’s last opportunity to avoid a similar fate? Trump may be South Korea’s greatest opportunity! Suffer his sprays, flatter his ego, and buy his colognes, watches and Trumpcoin (a bargain at USD2.10, down from its all-time high of about USD75.00). Flatter and bribe him to get what you want, in order to escape the deep-state fate that’s already been written and laid out. *** Another pint of Guinness please barkeep!!! - [Buy Me a Coffee](https://buymeacoffee.com/junotane)! ## Related articles - [[2025-04-21 Korea and the worst possible timing to negotiate with Trump|Korea and the worst possible timing to negotiate with Trump]] - [[2026-10-07 When should U.S. allies walk away?|When should U.S. allies walk away?]] - [[2026-10-09 The liberal-international order is dead|The liberal-international order is dead]]