November 30, 2016 - The Asia Society Korea Center brought to a close its 2016 Monthly Lecture Series by hosting a special dinner at the Lotte Hotel Seoul on Wednesday, November 30th. Many distinguished guests were in attendance, including former Prime Minister and Korea Center Honorary Chairman Lee Hong Koo, to listen to Mr. Young Joon Kim give his “Post-Mortem on the 2016 US Presidential Election: A Personal Perspective.” Mr. Kim is a partner of the international law firm of Milbank, Tweed, Hadley & McCloy and was a member of “Hillary for America, National Finance Committee”. A generous supporter of Asia Society for many years and having recently accepted the offer to join the Korea Center Board, Mr. Kim kindly agreed to share his assessment of the fallout from the Trump-Clinton presidential battle.

Not being a political analyst or journalist, Mr. Kim gave his talk based on his experience of having been involved in the last 3 presidential cycles where he had close contact with many of the key players in the various campaigns, starting with the 2008 Obama campaign. Mr. Kim’s general political view had been that although different administrations had different policy emphases and directions, the United States itself as a country, in terms of its core values and its place in the world, hasn’t fundamentally changed from administration to administration, until the tumultuous eight years of George W. Bush prompted him to get more actively involved in pushing for changes. That continued with his involvement with the Hillary campaign as Trump was starting to gain momentum in his race for the presidency.

Mr. Kim split his talk into 4 parts: How and why Hillary lost? How and why Trump won? What a Trump presidency could mean for the world? What are some potential silver linings in all of this? Rather than focusing on predictions about what Trump might do in terms of domestic or foreign policy, the talk centered more around how his election has changed America, its character, political spirit and discourse. While emphatically noting that the post-election reversals made by Trump on his extreme statements and threats do not normalize things, Mr. Kim ended the talk with some observations on potential silver linings, such as how this unexpected turn seems to have jolted the Millennials out of burying their face in the Facebook into taking more of ownership of the society and becoming more actively engaged in making positive changes.