@rpachecopardo I have no doubt they'll take it. We are agreed that this is something the ROKs desperately want. At every turn ROK elites hype this or that – K-pop, exports, skill at fighting corona, “Parasite” – to argue that SK is an ‘advanced country’ which doesn’t get its due.They’ve even /1
@rpachecopardo even written prestige-seeking right into the MOFA whitepapers. But permanency - expanding the G-7 to a G-8 to take in SK permanently - is something else: 1) There are other, larger economies, like India, who are more obvious choices, and Trump, of course, wants Russia back /2
@rpachecopardo above all. 2) Japan will obviously veto a permanent Korean seat in any forum where it can block. 3) Trump doesn't care for IOs, and the likelihood that this is some kind of planned, permanent expansion of the G-7 just to include SK is very low. Trump doesn’t plan like that,and /3
@rpachecopardo he hates SK anyway. 4) T is using SK for domestic reasons – namely to look a statesman at a time when he is advocating a military crackdown at home. The SK left knows what rightist domestic repression is like and should not carry water for an Erdogan-wanna. I am actually kinda /4
@rpachecopardo shocked at how the Moon government leapt at this. 5) Korea’s economy is not as open, deregulated, and fair to foreigners as it should be for this kind elevation, nor are its currency and bonds widely circulated enough. Trade here is still widely understood as exports, but not /5
@rpachecopardo imports; BoK still intervenes so much that it’s under DoT observation. That’s why everything here is so damn expensive. It should also noted that SK’s lust for this is rooted in rather illiberal values of exclusivist elitism and social climbing, particularly vis-à-vis LDCs - /6
@rpachecopardo the kind of ‘we’re in and you’re not/we’re yangban and you’re not/I went to a SKY school and you did not’ status seeking that is the curse of Korean civil society - plus a nationalist-competitive desire to get the Americans above all to place Korea on an equal footing with /7
@rpachecopardo Japan. I am all for SK contributing to global governance, but ideally for the right, liberal minded reasons, not external validation and self-congratulation. /8
