Kim Joon-hyung, a first-term lawmaker-elect from the minor progressive Rebuilding Korea Party (RKP), has set his sights on passing a parliamentary resolution, as his inaugural initiative.This motion would mean a ban on sending South Korean troops abroad in situations of military conflict — especially an envisaged clash between the United States and China over Taiwan.The former chancellor of the Korea National Diplomatic Academy (KNDA) and international relations professor at Handong Global University also said that he will table a series of parliamentary measures to rein in President Yoon Suk Yeol’s “war-like diplomacy” to protect the country’s interests amid continuing global geopolitical upheavals. “During the Yoon presidency, Korea literally became a pushover, conceding too much of its interests to the United States and Japan while witnessing its relations with China and Russia being aggravated excessively,” Kim said during an interview with The Korea Times on Wednesday.“The problem is that the opposition pinpoints Yoon’s diplomacy as one of his worst achievements, while the ruling bloc takes the opposite stance, meaning he will not likely change his diplomatic philosophy even after suffering a crushing defeat in the April 10 general elections. That’s the reason I decided to go into politics. If the Assembly fails to control this, the remaining three years of Yoon’s presidency will feel excessively prolonged.”

Kim is a diplomatic scholar who served in various adviser roles for liberal politicians, including former President Moon Jae-in and main opposition Democratic Party of Korea (DPK) Chairman Rep. Lee Jae-myung. During the Moon administration, he was on one of the expert panels advising Seoul at the 2018 inter-Korean summits and served as the head of the KNDA, an official institution under the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which develops the country’s long-term diplomatic strategies, from 2019 to 2021.He joined the RKP, which was created just a month before the elections as a political group whose main focus is containing the Yoon administration and earned a proportional representative seat.Less than a month before assuming his role as an Assemblyman, Kim has already established a clear-cut to-do list, with the first item being a resolution against dispatching troops to troubled regions overseas.“With the global superpowers’ interests clashing across the globe, the U.S. will count on South Korea to play its role in regional conflicts, with a possible 스포츠토토존 clash in Taiwan being the most concerning,” he said.