The Institute for Far Eastern Studies at Kyungnam University (Director Lee Kwan-Sei) held the 10th Samcheong Forum in the conference room on the 1st floor of the Peace Hall at 19:00 on Tuesday, August 27. The forum featured a lecture by Cho Byung-Jae (Professor Emeritus, Kyungnam University) on “Trump: People, Politics, and Policy.”

In his presentation, Professor Cho said that “Korea's biggest concerns about the 2024 US presidential election will be threefold: who will win, what does it have to do with us, and what will we do about it?” In terms of the outlook for the winner, he explained that “the 2024 US presidential election will be a close race with a small number of voters in a few key states deciding the outcome in light of the polarized US political reality.” “Both candidates are significantly expanding their legal teams, which could lead to lawsuits and and confrontations over the outcome of the election,” he added.

“Korea cannot influence the outcome of the U.S. presidential election, but the outcome of the U.S. presidential election will have a major impact on Korea,” he said, adding that if Trump wins the election, ‘the shift from a liberal international order to an America First order with protectionist policies rather than a market economy and free trade order will be accelerated,’ and that even if Harris wins, ‘she will have no choice but to adopt many of the elements of Trump's ’America First' policies.” Regarding security issues on the Korean Peninsula, “it will have a huge impact on the matters such as defense budget sharing, U.S. troops in South Korea, and improving North Korea-U.S. relations.”

“Korea is facing new challenges that it has never faced before,” said prof. Cho, emphasizing that a flexible and multidimensional approach is needed to achieve complex policy objectives in a transitional environment.

After the presentation, there was a Q&A session with the participants.