NEWT: The Korean Crisis Of Freedom And Democracy

When it was originally announced that newly-elected Korean President Lee Jae-myung would meet with President Donald J. Trump in Washington, I expected a totally positive event.

The United States has been committed to the defense of South Korea for 75 years. In fact, my father fought there in 1953 and went back in the 1960s in the Army to help protect South Korea. With our protection it has evolved into one of the leading manufacturing countries in the world.

South Korean shipbuilding is the second largest in the world exceeded only by communist China. In fact, South Korea builds about 35% of all the merchant ships worldwide annually.

I have written and talked about how South Korea’s efficient and technologically advanced ship building industry could help solve our own fleet problems. The current obsolete, bureaucratic, and inefficient American ship building system is in crisis. It has led the United States Navy and the Coast Guard to have inadequate and increasingly antiquated ships.

On that front, this visit was a major success. President Lee brought a plan for South Korea to invest billions in modernizing the American shipbuilding system – and in helping modernize the Navy and Coast Guard.

What I did not foresee was how radical the new government would be in going after its political opponents and the advocates of religious liberty.

President Lee clearly represented the leftwing of South Korean politics. His conservative opponents had warned that he was too close to communist China and too comfortable with Communist ideas.

I was skeptical of these charges. In meetings in Seoul with President Lee’s allies, I was assured that they were exaggerations.