New Moon in Seoul

His victory signals hopes for a decisive shift

In electing the moderate leftist Moon Jae-in as President, South Koreans may have handed Donald Trump — and the world — a breather from the escalating threat of nuclear war implicit in the stand-off with North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-un. Mr Moon bested two rivals to corner a landslide 41 per cent of the vote in an election that followed a political scandal involving the impeachment of the former president. No admirer of Mr Trump’s fighting talk and flexing of the US military muscle, such as the (hugely unpopular) deployment of the THAAD (Terminal High Altitude Area Defence) anti-missile system