• StopTouchingYourPhone@lemmy.world
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    2 days ago

    Headline misrepresents what their acting President said. From their own article:

    “After the devastation of the Korean war . . . the United States gave us aid, technology transfer, investments and security assurances,” which helped make South Korea “a very comfortable investment environment for foreigners”, Han told the Financial Times in an interview.

    “Our industrial prowess and our financial development and our culture and growth and wealth are very heavily due to the help from the United States,” he added.

    In light of this debt of gratitude, Seoul — one of Washington’s closest security allies and economic partners in Asia — would enter negotiations with Trump seeking to find “solutions which are more win-win for both, rather than taking their actions as the objective against which we should fight back”, Han said.

    • taladar@sh.itjust.works
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      2 days ago

      That sounds more like diplomacy speak for “These tariffs are a giant insult but since we had good relationships with the US in the past we will not immediately react in the way we obviously should but will make a token effort to negotiate with the madman in charge there now”.

      • philpo@feddit.org
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        19 hours ago

        The current South Korean government after the failed coup is caught between a rock and a hard place - first because they need to keep the followers of their domnestic mad man out, the fat mad man in the north out, the Winnie the Pooh lookalike madman out and the orange mad men out. All combined with a challenging internal and external political climate even without all these factors and you have a job none really wants.

        So I can absolutely understand for them to defuse and hoping to weather the storm out and see how things develop - even more so,since the Japanese tried to have trade talks and found out the hard way that the current US administration has no idea what they want.

    • Yermaw@lemm.ee
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      1 day ago

      Maybe they’re taking the view that the next guy might be better. Like when your friend has a mental breakdown and you stick around to see if they’ll make it back.