U.S. presidential election D-3 draws attention to 'white women's votes' amid super-conflict structure

■ Host: Lee Se-na Anchor, Jeong Chae-woon Anchor
■ Starring: Bong Young-sik, a professional researcher at Yonsei Unification Research Institute

* The text below may differ from the actual broadcast content, so please check the broadcast for more accurate information. Please specify [YTN Newswide] when quoting.

[Anchor]
The U.S. presidential election, which is only three days away, continues to be so close that it is difficult to predict the outcome until the end. In the midst of this, North Korea revealed its presence by firing intercontinental ballistic missiles just before the U.S. presidential election. How will the North Korean variable affect it? Let's talk with Bong Young-sik, a researcher specializing in Yonsei Unification Research Institute. How are you? The U.S. presidential election is three days away. If you look at the polls, it's literally very close and very close. How do you see the situation, Commissioner?

[Bongyeongsik]
It's really true that it's very close. It was in 2000 when Al Gore, the Democratic candidate, was the vice president. And it was so close that George W. Bush, the governor of Texas, fought a close game that the election victory was decided by who took the Florida electorate at the end. In the end, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of George W. Bush, and the Florida Electoral College ended up winning by George W. Bush. At that time, it was a very close game, but this time it was even more close than that.

[Anchor]
In particular, seven contending states, especially Pennsylvania, are drawing the most attention, but according to recent polls, Harris' approval rating is within the margin of error.It turned out that Ma was a little ahead.

[Bongyeongsik]
That depends on which pollster's results it cites that somewhere candidate Trump has the lead outside the margin of error. So I don't know the answer. The answer is that polls do not determine the election. Polls will be a tool to measure trends, and the results will not be determined by the votes counted after the presidential election on November 5.

But since it's such a dark election, we rely a lot on public opinion polls to analyze it. Pennsylvania, however, shows a trend that is unfavorable to both candidates and a trend that is favorable to them. First of all, if you look at the trend in favor of Harris, the economic situation has improved in the U.S. recently. So the percentage of Pennsylvania voters who say the economy is bad is down by 4% compared to last September.

So, the Biden administration's economic policy failure was really Harris' Achilles heel, and on top of that, there is a trend in which voters' votes are relieved. And the number of supporters who said Trump was more reliable on economic issues has similarly decreased by 4%. Even if Harris becomes president, the number of people who think she can solve the economic problem has increased by 4%. That could be seen as a change in favor of the Democratic Party. But also, white voters, especially white male voters, are coming together.

Trump's most anticipated concrete voter base right now is a low-income white male with a high school diploma or less. In terms of the nationwide distribution, Trump leads Harris by 35% in this voter base. If, somehow, these low-income, high-school white men come to the polls more aggressively on November 5th, Trump has a good chance of winning, including in seven contested states, Pennsylvania, and what Harris expects is a female voter.

White female voters, in particular, will decide this presidential election because this is what it looks like, in fact, Latino and Black voters have traditionally been Democratic supporters. However, since it has been the most economically damaged class in the past three and a half years, I was disappointed in the Biden administration and the Democratic government, so I turned to Trump a lot this time. More than 9% and 11% have turned from Democrats to Republican support, and the Democratic Party's task is to make up for it somehow. Then what you can expect is a female voter base.

Because the female electorate is much larger than about 14% of black voters and 14.8% of Latino voters. For example, even if Trump wins 10% more votes among Latino and Black voters this time than he did in 2020, Democratic nominee Kamala Harris will offset just 1% of Biden's dominated female voters in 2020 and Harris will be elected. So, there is a reason why candidate Harris continues to emphasize women's right to abortion, Trump persecutes women when he becomes president, and look at the hate speech.

And so you have to look at how much female voters, especially white female voters who have been supporting Republicans, are going to vote for Democrats this time, especially when white voters are important, and white voters don't vote for white presidential candidates. When Hillary Clinton, who was a white female candidate, came out in 2016, white female voters supported Trump by about 2 percent more. When Biden came out last time, he supported Trump about 4% more. If this is a tie, if Kamala Harris can fight as well as a tie in the white female electorate, Kamala Harris has a very good chance of winning the presidency.

[Anchor]
He said, "Which floor will go to the polling place more, this is the key," and that he should watch this part, but President Trump said again that he would protect women. Wouldn't this have an impact?

[Bongyeongsik]
Candidate Trump also knows this well, so he knows that his concrete supporters are white men from low-income families with high school education or lower, so he uses celebrities like Hulk Hogan wrestlers and macho to campaign to win the votes of those men, but on the other hand, he has been obsessed with minimizing the departure of white female voters. So in that sense, I don't persecute women. I will protect women. As a strong male president, I will protect women whether they like it or not. But that's a very bad thing for female voters to hear. Because it means that women lack the ability to protect themselves.

Whether women like it or not, I will protect women, which is causing a stir right now. So, Harris pointed out this and said, "I can see from Trump's remarks how politicians don't respect women," which seems to be a drag on Trump's last-minute rise.

[Anchor]
The gunpoint remarks toward former Vice President Cheney were also controversial, so how will former President Trump's remarks affect the remaining four days?

[Bongyeongsik]
So the attack on Cheney even though she's from the same Republican Party, look at me for the traditional Republican women who hate Trump so much in the Republican Party but can't bear to vote for a Democratic presidential candidate, as Cheney declared her support for Harris and accompanied her on the campaign trail. Republican female voters don't have to worry because it's a really secret vote this time, and you don't have to tell your husband to vote like this, and you've supported the Republican Party so far, but instead of thinking that you support the Republican Party, you should evaluate Trump objectively and think about what kind of future you want to live as a woman and what kind of future you want to pass on to your daughter. I've been doing this. So as a candidate for Trump, he's a thorn in the side.

That's why Representative Cheney's father, Vice President Dick Cheney, is the one driving the United States into a hole. He is a war fanatic. Because of Dick Cheney, he continues to demonize the U.S. by emphasizing this image that the U.S. started the war in Iraq and Afghanistan, and what would happen if Liz Cheney pointed a gun in her face?

[Anchor]
In a few days, the results of who will be the next president of the United States will come out, and former President Trump claims that election fraud is taking place in Pennsylvania. Regarding this, there is an analysis that says, "Isn't it a paving stone to disobey the presidential election?" What do you think?

[Bongyeongsik]
It's a paving stone. However, to disprove that again, when candidate Trump does so well, he does not talk about dissatisfaction with the presidential election results. Because if you're almost certain to win, you don't have to stress that. But if it's a bit unfavorable, for example, in the last presidential debate, Kamala Harris did a much better job than expected, right? The next thing that came out right away is that the presidential election is not a fair election. Election tampering is taking place. So I started saying again that I would disagree if it wasn't a fair election. Then, as it was on the rise again, the number of such remarks decreased a lot. It was necessary to emphasize the image of a president who was not a threat to a credible democracy. But once again, this possibility of dissent is a good example of how close Pennsylvania is to Pennsylvania, the most important state of contention with 19 electors at stake.

[Anchor]
In the meantime, the high pre-voting rate for the U.S. presidential election is also interested. There were reports that about 65 million people already did it. High early voting rates, the U.S. media mainly analyzed that it would work in Harris' favor. What do you think, Commissioner?

[Bongyeongsik]
That's right. The total number of registered voters is 166.4 million in this 2024 presidential election. The fact that more than 60 million of them voted in advance is that it is a fierce battle and that voters are interested in it. For example, isn't Pennsylvania the most important state among competing states? In fact, Kamala Harris is very hard to win without winning Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Rust Belt states. It's fierce because I know that. So Pennsylvania voters, according to a Washington Post poll, 93 percent of voters have already voted early or are very eager to vote. So such a high early turnout means that it's so close and the American voters are interested, so who has the advantage? Early voting has traditionally favored Democrats so far.

In the last 2020 presidential election, Biden had an advantage of about 6:1, but it was actually a different situation then. Because of COVID-19, Biden told me to vote by mail in advance to avoid contact, so Democrats were active after hearing that. Trump told me not to do it because he said that would remove the trap of election tampering. So, early voting turned out to be very advantageous for Biden, but this time, Republican candidate Trump also said early voting is okay and mail voting is okay, so there is a lot of voting from Republican supporters.

So what's coming out now is about 2:1, with Democratic candidate Harris' approval rating high, and when polling on voters who didn't vote early, Trump is still leading by a single digit among voters who want to vote on the same day.

[Anchor]
So, if you have the biggest variables for the rest of the year, what could be counted?

[Bongyeongsik]
Act. It's in the subtitles right now.Ma said at a Trump campaign in Madison Square Guard that Puerto Rico is a floating trash island, but Pennsylvania, a state in which Puerto Rico has the largest number of voters. Forty percent of Pennsylvania's voters are Puerto Rican, which made me feel very bad. That's why both candidates have to beat Pennsylvania. I don't know what's going to happen and Trump's camp is working hard to fix it. So if there is another rude talk, there is no time for both camps to deal with the great damage, right? The most important thing is how many supporters are actively voting. About 8 million voters are first-time voters. a younger generation I've never voted. How aggressively those voters vote to support Harris will determine the Democratic Party's chances of winning. When President Barack Obama won in 2008, young voters aged 18 to 29 supported Democrats 66 percent more than Republicans. It's a very big margin. In 2020, younger voters supported Biden 20% more than Trump. If so, how much more young voters will support Harris of the Democratic Party in 2024 will be such a variable to gauge the Democratic Party's victory.

[Anchor]
We've dealt with the U.S. presidential election issue and let's move on to the next topic. It's a North Korean issue. It was in the morning two days ago. North Korea claims to have finally succeeded in testing an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM). How do you rate this?

[Bongyeongsik]
For North Korea, it is true that the outcome of this presidential election is a very important variable that will determine the fate of the country. As I look forward to Trump's return. Then we can try the big deal again. However, in order for the presidential election to end in the United States and negotiate a new deal, doesn't North Korea also need strategic leverage? Then, from North Korea's point of view, no matter who becomes the next president, it is necessary to clearly show how direct a threat North Korea's nuclear and long-range missile capabilities are to the United States. Only then will the United States be given such an incentive to negotiate with North Korea. So this time, it's a complete version with the Hwasong-19 type. To say that it is completely successful and that the range is the longest ever and the flight time is the longest is to warn North Korea to prepare for negotiations without ignoring it because it has the ability to launch a nuclear attack on the U.S. mainland.

[Anchor]
What do you think about the possibility that Russia's high-tech technology entered North Korea when you said that it was a show-off aimed at the U.S. ahead of the U.S. presidential election?

[Bongyeongsik]
We'll have to wait and see. There's not just one high-tech thing. North Korea's demands and Russian technical support are also demanding various things. Didn't President Putin and General Secretary Kim Jong-un hold a summit in September 2023? Then Foreign Minister Choi Sun-hee goes to Moscow and meets with President Putin. in January of 24 But what's interesting is that YTN also reported at the time, and it reported a picture of Foreign Minister Choi Sun-hee holding a folder like this. But I can see reconnaissance satellites and missiles in the folder, maybe they did it on purpose.

It's a shopping list if you look at it. There were reports at the time that we were deliberately showing Putin's government that we were asking for this. Wouldn't Chairman Kim Jong-un want a lot of things in return for sending troops from Russia and exporting weapons so far? Among them, however, are re-entry technologies that help South Korea complete nuclear ICBMs that can attack the U.S., which it has nailed as an absolute red line. Will Putin really give that? That means we still have to wait. Then the first step is for Russia to provide technical assistance to the North that can further complete short- and medium-range missiles such as KN-23 and KN-24, which the North already provides and operates on the battlefield in Ukraine. Or, a military spy satellite that the North claims to have succeeded but seems not to have succeeded yet. It's not an ICBM. Wouldn't such technology support begin with technology support to complete reconnaissance satellites? There are many different guesses.

[Anchor]
What caught the eye at the test launch site this time was that her daughter Joo-ae was watching the entire process, so should it be seen as a work to solidify her successor?

[Bongyeongsik]
When Kim Joo-ae came out with her father at the Hwaseong missile test site for the first time, was she really the successor? He's so young. She's 14 years old, she's a woman. So, will a female successor be possible in such a male-centered and military-oriented society like North Korea? Isn't it just an expression of affection for Chairman Kim Jong-un's daughter? Wasn't there a rumor that you had a son? So I put the judgment on hold. But in a way, isn't it the central principle of the North Korean regime that the leader is succeeded? If so, it doesn't matter whether the successor is male or female if he inherited the Baekdu blood vessel. You can come out as Queen Seondeok. In that sense, Chairman Kim Jong-un made a decision early on to Kim Joo-ae as his successor, but since there may be animosity or resistance in North Korean society, he appeared early and dragged on the succession process for a long time, so I think it is possible to interpret that the North Korean military, the party, and the people naturally began to accept Kim Joo-ae as the leader. What is noteworthy is that North Korea has been established as a war when it has officially recognized its successor in North Korea so far. Since the Japanese Resistance, including the Korean War. That's why the succession begins with solidifying the image that the successor is a great general. So I also saw how Chairman Kim Jong-un's name for his daughter Kim Joo-ae changed, and at first, he said, "A noble person, a respected self-restraint." So there was no military title. However, I think we should pay attention to the recent use of the name General Saetbyeol.

[Anchor]
Didn't North Korean Foreign Minister Choi Sun-hee visit Russia at a sensitive time? At a time when the international community is closely watching North Korea's dispatch of troops to Russia, North Korea and Russia met, and they also said this here. North Korea will do its best to win Russia. How can we interpret the meaning?

[Bongyeongsik]
As I said earlier, if there is any agreement at the top level of Kim Jong-un and Putin, working-level officials will have to do that and take practical measures. So I think Foreign Minister Choi Sun-hee's visit to Russia now is a measure to reach a definite agreement on each other's deal after North Korea sent troops to Russia. The reason why he said he would side with Russia until the end is to do the same with the Russian report. North Korea and Russia are justifying North Korea's dispatch of troops to Russia now, doesn't this mean that there is no problem in terms of international law? The basis of that is the strategic comprehensive partnership signed last time. If you look at Article 4, if one party is invaded by one country or several countries, the other party to the treaty provides military support without delay, right? So since Russia was invaded by Ukraine, from Russia's point of view. There is nothing wrong with North Korea providing military support and sending military troops in accordance with Article 4. This is done according to the treaty. It's a sovereign exercise. However, from the perspective of North Korea, North Korea has kept all its obligations and loyalty to Russia under Article 4. But later, after the war, Russia doesn't need North Korea anymore. That's when we need to work quickly on Russia's economic recovery with Korea, an economic powerhouse.

It's a very nightmare scenario for North Korea. There was a case like that in our country, too. The Park Chung-hee administration sent troops to Vietnam, but as soon as the Vietnam War ended, the U.S. and the Nixon administration took care of Asian security countries. So, we reduced the number of U.S. troops in Korea, and then President Carter made a campaign promise until the complete withdrawal of U.S. troops in Korea, right? So from South Korea's point of view, we helped the United States as a faithful security partner, but the United States did not keep its promise. So, we cannot rule out that a similar situation will occur after the end of the Russia-Ukraine war from the perspective of North Korea, so we are in a hurry now. What you can get is that you have to get it quickly.

[Anchor]
North Korea is also drawing attention to whether it will send additional troops to Ukraine. But Shin Won-sik, head of the National Security Office, said this. I don't consider sending troops to Ukraine, but I said that it is necessary to send observers, so please give me a brief opinion on this.

[Bongyeongsik]
This is what the war in Ukraine is like for others or for us. I don't think it's the right way to think about it in this way in terms of our pursuit of profit. An expert appropriately said that this is a war we are involved in. Therefore, the North Korean military's combat capabilities in the war in Ukraine will increase exponentially, so is it really a measure that is most helpful for our security interests to stay still? In the past, there was a case in which the Roh Moo Hyun government used wisdom to send troops to Iraq to satisfy the United States and protect Korea's interests by sending troops of an appropriate size and character, not whether they were dispatched or not. In that way, I will tell you that it is most important to think about the strategic diplomacy of Gwanghaegun and respond flexibly and step by step.

[Anchor]
So far, we have dealt with the U.S. presidential election and North Korea issues with Bong Young-sik, a researcher specializing in the Yonsei Unification Research Institute. Thank you.