South Korea poised to crash and burn in 2025

It’s hard to think of any Asian nation happier to see the back of 2024 than South Korea.

In just the last month alone, President Yoon Suk Yeol declared martial law, backtracked six hours later, got impeached by parliament against the backdrop of massive street protests and now faces a historic arrest warrant.

If that wasn’t enough chaos and woe, the nation suffered its worst local aviation disaster in more than two decades, killing over 181 and raising harsh new questions about the safety of Korean skies.

Korea’s truly rotten December deepened what was already something of a midlife crisis year for Asia’s fourth-biggest economy. And yet, this may be as good as it gets as a wildly uncertain 2025 arrives: Seoul’s decidedly dysfunctional politics are about to collide with the Trumpian storm to come.

Even if, best-case scenario, “increased US protectionist measures imply lower tariffs on Korean exports than on other trading partners,” says economist Brian Coulton at Fitch Ratings, “declining demand from China and the US, which together accounted for around 40% of Korean goods exports in 2023, will negatively affect exports.”

Though the US president-elect’s threats of 60% tariffs are aimed at China, Korea will be right at the center of the collateral damage zone of potentially weaker Chinese demand. Japan, too, but then Tokyo isn’t embroiled in a political imbroglio the likes of which Seoul hasn’t seen in decades.

Something that Japan and Korea have in common, though, is being snubbed by Trump. Since his re-election on November 5, Trump rebuffed repeated overtures from Yoon and Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba for a Mar-a-Lago tee time.

Both Yoon and Ishiba have watched as Trump met with a parade of world leaders,