>Japan whispering in his ear and pulling the puppet strings

I'm curious if you have some sources for this? I'm not that familiar with SK politics and I'm obviously biased since almost all info about SK I either get from English/Japanese sources.

Afaik he was pretty dovish towards Japan during his election, which goes against the decades long tradition of tit-for-tat during election between SK&Japan since "looking tough to the neighbor" win votes. I wasn't aware of any "Japan whispering in his ear" level embezzlement. He seems just more pro US, closer ties with Japan rather than "balance things between China/US-JP"