S8 Ep157: Seoul's Dangerous Pivot North — Gordon Chang — Chang warns that South Korea's newly elected leftist presidentthreatens the stability of the U.S.-South Korea security alliance by seeking diplomatic unification with the North, pursuing engagement strategies

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John Batchelor

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🗓️ 3 December 2025

⏱️ 10 minutes

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Summary

Seoul's Dangerous Pivot North — Gordon Chang — Chang warns that South Korea's newly elected leftist presidentthreatens the stability of the U.S.-South Korea security alliance by seeking diplomatic unification with the North, pursuing engagement strategies likely to be rejected by Kim Jong-un. Chang documents that North Korea's Kim Jong-un is simultaneously deepening military-technical cooperation with Russia against Ukraine, creating triangular strategic complications threatening regional stability. Chang emphasizes that South Korea's strategic pivot toward North Koreawill destabilize the American alliance framework in Northeast Asia precisely when Russian-Chinese-North Koreancoordination represents an escalating threat to American regional interests and Pacific stability.

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is CBS On the World.
0:07.0	I'm John Batchel with my friend and colleague Gordon Chang, I'm Gordon G. Chang.
0:11.0	We begin with a headline from the Korean Peninsula.
0:14.0	North Korea's Kim stresses Air Force's nuclear war deterrence on its 80th birthday. AP, North Korea leader Kim Jong-Han and daughter Mark Air Force's nuclear war deterrence on its 80th birthday.
0:21.9	AP, North Korea leader Kim Jong-un and daughter Mark Air Force anniversary
0:25.9	and from overseas how one of the most dangerous and non-transparent countries in the world
0:34.4	celebrates its nuclear weapons.
0:40.5	Gordon, the puzzle about North Korea is not that it's a bad actor, not that it can't be trusted, but that our last information from South Korea
0:46.6	is that the new president believes that there is a conversation to be looked to between himself and Kim Jong-un about uniting the
0:57.7	peninsula or working together or lowering the fear factor, something like that.
1:04.8	I don't know.
1:05.3	It's always vague.
1:06.6	It didn't come up in the most recent APEC meeting.
1:09.7	We all recall that the president of the United States seemed to agree with the president of
1:15.4	South Korea, that North Korea, that South Korea needs a nuclear-powered submarine.
1:22.4	Maybe built in the U.S., may be built in South Korea.
1:25.1	It has a very competent and world-class shipbuilding
1:28.6	industry. That seems inconsistent with the threats from North Korea and the election
1:36.8	intention of the new president in South Korea to make peace. Can you put all this together, Gordon?
1:43.7	Thank you. Yeah. The South Korea's this together, Gordon? Thank you.
1:45.1	Yeah.
1:45.8	The South Korea's new president, E.J. Meng, who was elected in early June,
	...

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