SOUTH KOREA PERSPECTIVE

Korea Times and Yonhap cover the Iran-Trump war with particular vigilance tied to the Korean security context. Hegseth's remark calling North Korea's nuclear program a 'lesson' in the Iran context — implying a program not dismantled before it was 'too late' — is analyzed at length. On economics, the US has become the top naphtha exporter to South Korea since the war, a costlier but Gulf-diversifying shift. Seoul watches the Merz-Trump fracture with anxiety: if Washington treats Germany so dismissively on Iran, what would happen to the US-Korean relationship in a peninsula crisis?