South Korean president-elect Lee Myung-bak will take office on February 25, 2008. A member of the conservative Grand National Party and former executive of the Hyundai Corporation, Lee won the December 2007 contest by the largest margin since the advent of competitive democratic elections in the Republic of Korea (ROK) in the late 1980s. This landslide victory clearly reflects widespread dissatisfaction with the policies and practices of the outgoing South Korean president, populist Roh Moo-hyun. But what does this change mean for U.S.-ROK relations? How will it affect key issues on the Washington-Seoul agenda, such as the North Korean problem, the U.S.-ROK military alliance, and the pending free trade agreement known as KORUS? On February 19, Bruce Bechtol, professor of international relations at the Marine Corps Command and Staff College; Marcus Noland, senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics; and Ambassador Charles L. Pritchard, president of the Korea Economic Institute, will join AEI scholars Michael Auslin and Nicholas Eberstadt in assessing the implications of the impending change in South Korean leadership for the longstanding U.S.-ROK partnership.
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