What’s next for South Korea’s Yoon after pummelling at the polls?

With a hostile parliament now armed with a new mandate, analysts expect formidable hurdles for Yoon in implementing his presumed pro-market reforms in labour, national pension fund and education.

Will South Korea’s Yoon ignore calls to say ‘xie xie’ and forget Taiwan?

While Yoon retains presidential executive orders and veto powers to navigate an opposition-controlled parliament, his electoral defeat undermines his authority within the administration and diminishes his influence over lawmakers from his party, according to observers.

Despite these challenges, Yoon was likely to persist with his diplomatic approach, aligning Seoul closer to the US and Japan amid the North’s nuclear posturing and China’s growing influence while the war continued in Ukraine, they said.

Critics have argued for a more balanced approach between the South’s traditional allies and China, accusing Yoon of unnecessarily antagonising the country’s largest trade partner and inadvertently pushing Pyongyang deeper into Beijing’s sphere of influence.

South Korea’s constitution grants exclusive authority to the president in foreign affairs, limiting the National Assembly’s influence in this realm.

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South Korea bans protest onions at polling stations ahead of parliamentary elections

South Korea bans protest onions at polling stations ahead of parliamentary elections

Some critics said Yoon’s leadership style, shaped by his background as a prosecutor, fostered a simplistic “friend-or-foe” worldview that hampered nuanced diplomacy.

“He can’t afford to risk losing his last support base by attempting to soften his stance towards the North and China,” political science expert professor Lee Jun-han at Incheon National University said.

But professor Park Won-gon of Ewha University said the president’s efforts in advancing his diplomatic agenda could suffer a setback due to a hostile parliament.

“In light of Yoon’s stubborn style, there won’t be significant changes in his diplomatic approach, but we can’t rule out the possibility that his policies will lose much of their steam following the election defeat,” Park told This Week in Asia.

While Park agreed that widespread sentiment against an assertive Beijing could limit the opposition-controlled parliament to tamper Yoon’s stance, he said the president might face heightened scrutiny over his handling of sensitive historical issues stemming from Japan’s 1910-45 colonial rule, such as the “comfort women” controversies.

Envoy’s alleged power abuse puts further strain on tense South Korea-China ties

On the eve of Wednesday’s elections, Yoon visited the Yellow Sea and called for the coastguard to crack down hard on Chinese vessels poaching blue crabs, underscoring his firm stance against Beijing.

Aboard a coastguard vessel, he accused the previous liberal government of turning a blind eye to the poaching by Chinese vessels for fear of harming relations with China.

“North Korea, which has a military alliance with China, also strongly cracks down on illegal fishing by Chinese vessels, but the previous government failed to crack down properly because it was concerned about its relations with China, causing great damage to our fishermen,” he said.

Professor Park said South Korea was in a dilemma. While it has been roped into growing US-led regional security blocs, it needs to avoid further alienating China.

The US, the UK and Australia are reportedly considering South Korea, Canada and New Zealand as well as Japan as potential partners for advanced capability projects of their Aukus security agreement.

“The US is set to start in earnest the fundamental realignment of its regional alliances” under which “hub-and-spoke” style bilateral alliances centred on Washington would be replaced by a “latticework” of various mini alliances with participants playing more equal roles in the Indo-Pacific region, Park said.

Kim Joon-hyung, former head of the Korea National Diplomatic Academy, last month called on the Yoon government to stop sacrificing national interest to pursue an ideology-oriented policy at a time of mounting US-China strategic confrontation.

“We cannot engage in ideological battles when our survival and national interests are more urgent than ever,” said Kim who was also elected as a member of the Rebuild Korea Party at the elections.

“South Korea has lost much of its ability to play a key role on the international stage due to its biased diplomacy looking only to the US and Japan,” he said.