South Korea’s current president, Moon Jae-in, entered office in May 2017 with an approval rating of nearly 80%, one of the highest in the country’s modern history.  Although he won the presidential election with 13.4 million votes (or 41% percent of the voting population)¹, and has maintained an approval rating between 70-80%², Moon faces many challenges that will critically shape the rest of his term. The most significant he is likely to face are: 1) building consensus with the splintered political parties in the South Korean National Assembly; 2) pushing forward with ambitious plans for political and economic reform; and 3) dealing with major foreign policy problems such as North Korea and China. He has had scant success with North Korea, but his contacts with China in the final months of 2017 have tested how tightly tied to the United States he wants to be, including to its trilateral strategy with Japan and Trump’s new Indo-Pacific strategy.    

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