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Yesterday in Seoul,
President Trump addressed the National Assembly of the Republic of Korea. This is what he was talking about:
 The Korean Peninsula by Night -- A NASA photo.
And this is the rest of the paragraph:
"We seek a future of light, prosperity, and peace. But we are only prepared to discuss this brighter path for North Korea if its leaders cease their threats and dismantle their nuclear program."
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President Trump made a brief reference to trade early in his remarks, but this was not a trade speech. This was a speech about the enormous transformation of South Korea in the years following the Korean War, about the alliance between the United States and the Republic of Korea, and about the bitterly disappointing history of the diplomatic efforts to get North Korea to abandon her nuclear ambitions.
For the most part, we shall leave it to you, the interested reader, to discover those elements in the original speech. Some of the facts about South Korea that the President cited are indeed inspiring, and we can't resist sharing at least few of them. P
resident Trump:
From the Starting Line
. "When the Korean War began in 1950, the two Koreas were approximately equal in GDP. ... [T]oday the South's economy is over 40 times larger."
Economics:
"Today your economy is more than 350 times larger than it was in 1960. Trade has increased 1,900 times. Life expectancy has risen from 53 years to more than 82 years."
Financial Crisis
: "When the Republic you won faced financial crisis [in 1997-98], you (citizens of South Korea) lined up by the millions to give your most prized possessions-your wedding rings, heirlooms, and gold 'lucky keys'-to restore the promise of a better future for your children."
Intellectual Achievement
. "Korean authors penned roughly 40,000 books this year. Korean musicians fill concert halls all around the world. Young Korean students graduate from college at the highest rate of any country."
Golf.
"And you know what I'm going to say - the Women's U.S. Open was held this year at Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, New Jersey, and it just happened to be won by a great Korean golfer, Sung-hyun Park. ... And the top four golfers ... were from Korea."
Limits.
"The Korean miracle extends exactly as far as the armies of free nations advanced in 1953-24 miles to the north. There, it stops; it all comes to an end. Dead stop. The flourishing ends, and the prison state of North Korea sadly begins."
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