President Lee Jae-Myung’s Plan to Reboot South Korea

Lee’s actions are meant to reboot South Korea. The West may think of his nation in terms of space-age technology and zeitgeist-defining cultural phenomena like KPop Demon Hunters, though in truth South Korea battles the lowest birth rate, top suicide rate, and highest youth unemployment of any developed nation. Lee is clear-eyed about the stakes. South Korea is in “a very serious crisis,” he says. “To address these issues, we need to bring our economy back on track for growth and increase opportunities for our people.”

His pitch is that securing South Korean prosperity and boosting its role in sensitive supply chains can help regional security too. In October, South Korea hosts the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation for the first time in 20 years, and Lee hopes the event—due to be attended by the leaders of both the U.S. and China—can catalyze his nation’s return to Asia’s top table.

However, threading the needle will not be easy. On the same day Lee sat down with TIME in Seoul, less than 600 miles away Chinese President Xi Jinping welcomed Russia’s Vladimir Putin and North Korea’s Kim Jong Un to Beijing to commemorate 80 years since the end of World War II. Other dignitaries included the leaders of Iran, Belarus, and Myanmar—a motley cohort dubbed the “axis of upheaval” by the Western press—in a clear rebuke to the U.S.-led order. “I think China wanted me to attend, but I didn’t ask further,” laughs Lee.