South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol has taken up golf again after an eight-year hiatus, in an effort to forge a close relationship with US President-elect Donald Trump. “Hitting a ball properly” is seen as a vital first step in establishing rapport with Trump, Yoon’s office said.
Yoon dusted off his clubs at a golf course in Seoul on Sunday, in preparation for a potential round with Trump in the near future, local media reported. A spokesman for Yoon’s office said that the South Korean president last played golf in 2016.
”Our president also has to hit a ball properly to get conversations going on” with Trump, the spokesman said, adding that the incoming American leader has “outstanding” golf skills.
Trump is an avid golfer and owns 16 courses around the world. He claims that his handicap is as low as 2.8, a figure that professionals would envy and some critics say is exaggerated.
Throughout his first presidency, Trump often held meetings on the golf course. The late Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe played golf five times with Trump, and the two became close friends. Following Abe’s assassination in 2022, Trump sometimes told his aides “I wish I could see Shinzo,” Japanese journalist Kenji Minemura told a TV network in Japan’s Kansai region earlier this year.
Yoon told reporters that he spoke to Trump by phone for around ten minutes last week, and that the two leaders “agreed that we should meet in person soon.”
Talks between Washington and Seoul will likely be dominated by tariffs, South Korean Finance Minister Choi Sang-mok said at a cabinet meeting last week. South Korea’s trade surplus with the US reached a record $44.4 billion last year, largely owing to its semiconductor industry and the rising popularity of imported Hyundai and Kia automobiles. Trump has vowed to use tariffs to redress the US’ trade deficits, particularly with China.
Trump and Yoon may also discuss the US military presence in South Korea. The US keeps around 28,000 troops in the Asian nation, and although Washington and Seoul agreed last month that the latter would pay $1.13 billion per year for this deployment going forward, Trump has suggested that the price tag should be nearly ten times higher.
”If I were there now, they’d be paying us $10 billion a year. And you know what? They’d be happy to do it,” Trump told Bloomberg last month, calling South Korea “a money machine.”