According to the ALL OF US State Department, Leader Joe Biden fulfilled with South Korean president Yoon Suk-yeol on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly meeting on Sept 21. The White House readout will be worth quoting in its entirety:
“President Joseph R Biden Jr met today with Leader Yoon Suk-yeol from the Republic of Korea (ROK) on the margins of the United Nations Common Assembly in Ny.
“The two leaders reaffirmed their dedication to strengthen the particular US-ROK alliance and ensure close cooperation to address the threat posed by the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK).
“The presidents also discussed the ongoing cooperation on the broad range of concern issues including supply chain resilience, essential technologies, economic plus energy security, worldwide health, and environment change. ”
This terse three-sentence statement results in as the typical say-nothing boilerplate of US meetings with foreign royalty. That is, unless you realize the meeting lasted all of 48 seconds .
Yes, 48 secs, including translation between English and Korean. President Biden has been known to invest that much time trying to form a single sentence, never mind the particular interpretation. The particular description of the meeting takes longer to read out loud than the actual meeting.
The White House scribe exactly who wrote this readout had to expand every single last word and action in the meeting to make it look like something substantive has been actually “discussed” in this drive-by.
This really is paid-by-the-word Emile Zola-esque padding, not the Hemingway-telegram prose that characterizes the US government’s laconic, mirandized, Kremlin-bunker statements on complex issues.
Korea’s ‘Lenny Bruce’ goes to New York
How did President Yoon take this abbreviated micro-meeting? Using a short stand-up program that would have done Lenny Bruce proud. ( Lenny Bruce was a comedian who used obscenity to point to social truths. ) In fact , the South Korean president’s vulgarity is really a match made in (comedy) heaven for the short attention span of the cognitively challenged US president.
The foul-mouthed Korean leader was recorded cursing the united states political class plus Biden as he had been walking away from this “drive-by summit” with his American counterpart.
The Yoon management had expected a strong summit with Biden to discuss core issues affecting South Korea, among them, the IRA (Inflation Reduction Act) legislation. And a lot more, this US regulation eliminates the $7, 500 tax credit for electric vehicles (EVs) made outdoors North America.
Originally intended to counter China’s lead in sustainable energy technologies, it also disadvantages the US market for South Korean automakers such as Kia and Hyundai, which will not build cars within the US until 2025.
South Korea sees this like a betrayal by the ALL OF US, after the Yoon management bowed and scraped to US policy dictates such as the POTATO CHIPS Act. These dictates reinforce and escalate a growing economic housing and blockade that will the US is certainly waging against Tiongkok, initiated by previous president Donald Trump but originally conceived by his precursor Barack Obama’s management.
Elements of this economic combat, pre-textually labeled as “supply-chain resilience” or a “clean tech transition, ” come at great costs to the South Korean economy, which is battling to get back upon its feet.
The cost of after this US policy of containment against Beijing is very damaging towards the south Korean economy because China is Seoul’s biggest trading partner. Thus South Korea had reasonably expected at least a bone thrown its way regarding EVs. Instead, the US has set up the Southern Korean EV sector for massive failing.
Instead of a sit-down peak meeting to discuss South Korea’s substantial worries on the collateral damage, President Yoon was handed a 48-second glad-handing drive-by after the EL Global Fund Renewal Conference – to which he had been invited only as an afterthought.
Yoon’s political fortunes are cratering in South Korea, where polls display him as one of the majority of unpopular presidents in the country’s modern background. Hopes had been placed for a minimum of a 30-minute listening to with President Biden that might yield a few trickle-down benefits, potentially some indulgences concerning EV credits designed for Korea.
Instead, Yoon had to settle for a quick drive up to the favor windows of the White Home – where Yoon had placed their order ahead of time – and then was handed a big, fat, succulent nothingburger.
Yoon was certainly pissed away that Biden could only spare forty eight seconds of their time in a “sidelines meeting. ” But even more significantly, the fact that he came up grabbing air could hardly have pleased the particular Korean president. To return empty-handed in order to Korea after a quickie glad-handling – a political pump-and-dump – only adds to the embarrassment.
He spoke his mind to a thicket associated with cameras and microphones as he was strolling away: “If those f***ers in the US Congress do not pass the [the $6 billion Global Fund appropriations] bill, how will Biden live down the sh*t-faced distress? ”
Yoon’s humiliation here compounded Biden’s “you don’t even exist” handshake with Yoon in the NATO summit in Madrid earlier this year.
Trash-talking teenage tit-for-tat
Let it be observed that President Yoon, hardly a person in order to let bygones become bygones, has given as good as he has obtained in the past. For example , he treated Nancy Pelosi to a full-on diplomatic ice-out when the lady traveled to Seoul to cool down right after her ill-conceived attempt to provoke China more than Taiwan.
Expecting a rousing hero’s accepted from sycophants within the subjugated US neo-colony of South Korea, Pelosi was welcomed with nothing, not really a meeting with middle-ranking staff.
Yoon refused to meet her in person – despite being only 15 minutes away by a gradual cab in bad traffic – claiming he was “on vacation, ” the political absurdity: affairs of state in South Korea have zero holidays.
To stroke in the insult, Yoon leisurely attended a theater performance that day and then treated the performers to a lavish banquet that lasted late into the night. Pelosi was not invited towards the dinner or even just for dessert, where it is rumored that her favorite gourmet delicious chocolate ice cream was served and savored. Yoon also declined to send any ministerial staff to welcome her, a first in South Korean diplomatic history.
Yoon’s adolescent trash-talking of the ALL OF US political class astounds only those who do not know him and people who assume US vassals love their own masters rather than despising them with every bone tissue in their sycophantic systems.
Characterized as an unfortunate indiscretion in the mainstream press – with specialist and amateur lexicologists trying to decipher regardless of whether Yoon had referred to the US Congress as “bitches, ” “bastards, ” “c*nts” or “f*ckers, ” this behavior is in fact par for the course for President Yoon, who is known for making colorful spontaneous statements to the press.
Many Korean males perfect the fine art of imprecationexecration in the military. Yoon’s salty vocabulary is unlikely to get come from this. Since South Korea’s the majority of infamous draft dodger – with vision problems (anisometropia) that will seem to vanish close to a golf course or even pool hall – his potty mouth area is more likely a good ingrained characteristic from the incestuously silver-spooned, impulse-control-free ruling class which he belongs to.
In fact , the South Korean president has a great making inappropriate claims when he is not really handled and firmly scripted, and is widely considered a walking hot mike.
Be careful what you want for
The united states political class had exulted after Chief executive Yoon’s election, lauding him as “ the perfect US partner ” in “lockstep with the US. ” This was after many years of the Moon Jae-in administration’s passive-aggressive preventing of their belligerent “pivot to Asia. ’
Moon Jae-in was a former college student radical and a crucial leader of South Korea’s radical 386 Generation – the generation that had protested US imperialism and eventually delivered down the US-quisling dictator Chun Doo-hwan. He ran on the platform of “saying no to the US. ”
Moon during his obama administration had tried to wrest back South Korean control of OpCon (operational control) of ROK troops who are currently under US control (in wartime), attempted to obstruct THAAD positioning on South Korean soil, sought in order to de-escalate tensions and normalize relations along with North Korea, plus generally tried to triangulate between Washington plus Beijing as the ALL OF US was escalating the hybrid war upon China.
He was not successful in his attempts, and was thwarted at every turn by US.
This is because the US needs elevated tension with North Korea since pretext to operationalize its geostrategic hostility against China within Northeast Asia.
Likewise, carried on control of South Korea’s military is essential for all of us military plans towards China. Moon’s attempts to normalize North-South economic exchange through cross-border train would also have switched South Korean into the Far Eastern terminus of the Chinese Belt plus Road Initiative. The united states crippled this initiative before it could get out of the starting obstructs.
Moon’s designated 386 Generation successor, the progressive gran of Seoul, Park Won-soon, died inside a sudden, unexpected, and suspicious suicide midway through Moon’s management. This echoed the fate of Moon’s predecessor plus mentor, Roh Moo-hyun, who also passed away in a suspicious “suicide” after his president term.
This left the particular presidential election industry open, and a dunce’s dunce with no politics experience sometimes compared to Donald Trump, a chief prosecutor by the name of Yoon Seok-yul, entered the fray.
Candidate Yoon ran on a right-wing platform of misogyny, stupidity, and sycophancy to the US. This was highlighted when he wrote a slavishly sycophantic essay in Foreign Affairs . The article, a sophomoric copy-and-paste job associated with State Department tropes against China, could have been laughed from any classroom as plagiarism, except it so deeply shown what the US judgment class craved to know:
“A deeper alliance with Washington should be the central axis associated with Seoul’s foreign policy. South Korea has benefited from the global and regional order led by the United states of america. Seoul should look for a comprehensive strategic alliance with Washington [and] actively promote a free, open, and comprehensive order in the Indo-Pacific [and] willingly participate in [the] Quadruped Security Dialogue [and] dreiseitig security coordination using the United States and Japan. ”
This obsequiousness – a love notice to the US, the Confession of the Doctrine of the Faith – that offered the US Indo-Pacific Strategy to it on a magic platter days prior to the South Korean selection, won favor with the Biden administration, plus Yoon was openly endorsed by effective members of the US political class.
On election night, Yoon squeaked by against his progressive opponent in the closest election in the history of Southern Korea. Washington was overjoyed.
Yet this repaid the Yoon administration’s slavish obsequiousness by declining to meet with a high-level delegation to Washington that had gone to provide its credentials. Instead of receiving a stroking, it was an early humiliation that foreshadowed the many ways in which the Biden administration might ignore Yoon and take him designed for granted.
Little does the US understand that President Yoon – a political loose cannon – has got the potential to explode US-South Korea relations in ways that the Us citizens have not even begun to imagine. Pump-and-dump-the-chump is a bad way to keep its important customers, especially since the Yoon administration are not lovelorn fools but handy opportunists. South Korea’s supply-chain collaboration with China may only be the start.
As the US Disposition unravels and its exacerbated vassals squirm and scatter, colorful vocabulary should be the least of the concerns.