As foreign governments prepare to deal with a second Trump administration, at least one key U.S. ally is hoping to make headway on the fairway.
South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol “got out his golf clubs for the first time in eight years and resumed his golf practice” as he gets ready to meet President-elect Donald Trump in person, his office told NBC News on Monday.
Trump famously loves the sport and has golf properties in Florida, New Jersey, Virginia and elsewhere. For lawmakers, businesspeople and occasionally world leaders, getting out on the links has been an important way to get close to him.
Yoon, whose approval rating hit a record low 17% last week, also convened an emergency economic and security meeting over the weekend in response to Trump’s election victory, his office said in a text briefing Sunday. South Korean officials are especially concerned about Trump’s vow to impose tariffs of 20% on all U.S. imports, as well as other demands he could place on the country and the overtures he could make toward its rival, North Korea.
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Yoon told reporters last week that he had spent about 10 minutes on the phone with Trump after his election victory and that the two leaders “agreed that we should meet in person soon.”
He appears to be following the playbook of Japan’s late Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, said David Boling, director of Japan and Asian trade at New York-based consulting firm Eurasia Group.
Abe, who was assassinated in 2022, had a close personal relationship with Trump and played golf with him at least five times both in the United States and Japan, sometimes raising ethical concerns. He also gifted Trump with a set of gold-plated golf clubs during a November 2016 visit to Trump Tower in New York, shortly after he was first elected president.
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Abe “was extraordinarily skillful in dealing with Trump,” including through golf, Boling said in a briefing last week after the U.S. election.
“He flattered Trump, he gave him gold golf clubs, he nominated him for a Nobel Peace Prize,” he said, adding, “The thing that was remarkable to me about Abe is he was willing to sacrifice his own rather large ego to make space and room for Trump’s big ego.”
Yoon — who stole the show at a White House state dinner last year with his rendition of his favorite song, “American Pie” — “could be the Abe of a Trump 2.0 administration, at least from East Asia,” Jeremy Chan, a senior analyst for China and Northeast Asia at Eurasia Group, said in the same briefing.
In addition to being “constitutionally cut from a very similar cloth” as Trump, he said, Yoon is “remarkably pro-American” and “very fluent” in English.
“I’ve heard Yoon doesn’t really play much golf, but he’s also a man of many talents,” Chan said. “And so he could potentially learn how to swing a club or two, if that’s going to get him on the green with President Trump.”
He may also be able to leverage Trump’s interest in golfers such as Lydia Ko of New Zealand, who was born in Seoul. When Ko won gold in the women’s individual golf event at the Paris Olympics in August, Trump congratulated her and described her as “most impressive” in a post on his social media platform Truth Social, adding that he had met her at his Trump Turnberry golf resort in Scotland.
Compared with Abe, it may be tougher going for Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba, who was voted by lawmakers to remain in office Monday despite his long-governing party’s dismal showing in parliamentary elections last month.
“Ishiba does not play golf the best that I can tell,” Boling said.
South Korea had outwardly projected calm before the U.S. presidential election, saying the U.S.-South Korea relationship would remain “rock-solid” no matter who won.
“But a lot of that sort of sanguine attitude, I think, belies real disquiet beneath the surface” in terms of security and the economy, Chan said.
Like Japan, South Korea is likely to face higher U.S. tariffs “or straight up just extraordinary demands for South Korea to purchase more U.S. goods to reduce the trade imbalance,” which has roughly doubled since the end of Trump’s first term, Chan said.
South Korean Finance Minister Choi Sang-mok said last week that the government would work to minimize any adverse impact on local companies from changing U.S. trade policies.
There are also concerns about the future of the U.S.-South Korea security alliance, after Trump accused Seoul in his first term of not paying enough for the 28,500 American troops stationed in South Korea. Not long after Trump left office, South Korea reached an agreement with his successor, President Joe Biden, to increase its contribution by almost 14%, the biggest increase in almost two decades.
Last month, the U.S. and South Korea agreed on a new five-year cost-sharing plan for the U.S. troops.
“They did this to get ahead of potential Trump victory and to prevent another round of extortionary negotiations,” Chan said.
But it’s possible Trump will ask South Korea to pay still more, Chan said, and that he will threaten to reduce the U.S. military presence in South Korea or the two countries’ joint military exercises if it doesn’t.
Maintaining a strong security alliance with the U.S. is especially important for South Korea given the growing hostility from nuclear-armed North Korea. While Yoon takes a hard line on his northern neighbor, Trump is widely expected to resume the in-person summits he held during his first term with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.
But North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs have made big advances since Trump left office, Chan said, and his new administration may now be prepared to accept a freeze in Pyongyang’s nuclear ambitions rather than its complete denuclearization, essentially accepting North Korea as a nuclear state.
That in turn could lead South Korea and even Japan to consider whether they need nuclear weapons of their own.
“There’s a few steps between here and there, but that’s top of mind for policymakers,” Chan said.
Stella Kim reported from Seoul, South Korea, and Jennifer Jett reported from Hong Kong.
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