South Korea Needs a United Front With the U.S.

His differences with U.S. President Donald Trump may have helped win Moon Jae-in the presidency of South Korea. Now he and Trump need to focus on what unites them.

During the campaign, Moon took issue with the U.S. administration's approach to North Korea. In the past, he's called for engaging economically with the North and restarting joint development projects, rather than seeking to isolate Kim Jong Un's regime. He opposed what he portrayed as the rushed deployment of a U.S. system designed to shoot down North Korean missiles, saying the decision should have been left to the new government. Meanwhile, Trump roiled the waning days of the campaign by threatening to scrap the bilateral free-trade agreement between the two allies and demanding that South Korea pay the $1 billion bill for the anti-missile system.