South Korean President Lee Jae-myung faced a pivotal moment yesterday, when he was slated to meet US President Donald Trump in Washington for their first summit, as the countries’ decades-old alliance strains to confront rapid geopolitical changes.
Much is riding on the meeting for Lee, who took office in June after a snap election called after his conservative predecessor — feted in Washington for his hard line on North Korea — was removed for attempting to impose martial law.
South Korea’s economy relies heavily on the US, with Washington underwriting its security with troops and nuclear deterrence. Lee hopes to chart a balanced path of cooperation with the US, while not antagonizing top trade partner China.
Photo: EPA
As he headed to the US, Lee sent a special delegation to Beijing, which delivered a message calling for normalized relations with China that have been strained in recent years.
South Korea has long come under targeted criticism from Trump, who has called it a “money machine” that takes advantage of US military protection.
Lee would seek to make a good impression, connect personally with Trump and, above all, avoid any unpleasant surprises, analysts said.
“For Lee, a no-news summit I think would be good,” said Victor Cha of the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
Under heavy pressure from Trump’s administration, South Korean negotiators last month secured a last-minute deal to avoid the harshest of new US tariffs, but they must still hammer out details of billions of dollars in promised investments in the US.
South Korean officials say they hope such working-level trade negotiations would largely be left for other meetings.
“There are many major topics in the security field,” Lee’s top policy aide, Kim Yong-beom, said last week.
“Our position is that trade was already finalized last time. We hope that specific implementation plans for trade won’t be included in the summit at all, or at least should be kept simple if discussed,” he added.
Several top officials, including the foreign minister, rushed to Washington over the weekend to try to iron out final details.
Lee, who arrived in Washington on Sunday, would highlight some of South Korea’s expected investments when he visits a shipyard in Philadelphia owned by the country’s Hanwha Group after the summit. Cooperation to help the ailing US shipbuilding sector is part of the broad tariff agreement reached between the countries.
Trump was expected to pressure Lee to commit to more spending on defense, including potentially billions of dollars more toward the upkeep of 28,500 US troops stationed in South Korea.
Wi Sung-lac, Lee’s top security adviser, said South Korea was in talks with Washington over defense spending, taking as a reference NATO’s agreement on a big new defense spending target.
Wi added that the government was also looking into a plan for the purchase of US weapons.
While focusing on increasing military spending, Lee would likely seek to avoid conversations about a potential reduction of US troops or using them for a wider range of operations, or details on modernizing the alliance, said Kim Du-yeon, a Seoul-based adjunct senior fellow with the Indo-Pacific Security Program at the Center for a New American Security.
Lee told reporters it would be difficult for Seoul to accept the demand by the US to adopt “flexibility” in operating the US military stationed in South Korea.
“They should leave those topics for working-level officials to hash out,” Kim said. “Ambition could backfire.”
Trump and Lee might also discuss efforts to persuade North Korea to freeze and eventually abandon its nuclear weapons program.
Both leaders support engaging Pyongyang, and Lee has called for a phased approach to denuclearization.
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un says South Korea and the US remain hostile to his country and he will never give up his nuclear arsenal.
Over the weekend Kim supervised test firing of new air defense systems.
An American scientist convicted of lying to US authorities about payments from China while he was at Harvard University has rebuilt his research lab in Shenzhen, China, to pursue technology the Chinese government has identified as a national priority: embedding electronics into the human brain. Charles Lieber, 67, is among the world’s leading researchers in brain-computer interfaces. The technology has shown promise in treating conditions such as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis and restoring movement in paralyzed people. It also has potential military applications: Scientists at the Chinese People’s Liberation Army have investigated brain interfaces as a way to engineer super soldiers by boosting
Jailed media entrepreneur Jimmy Lai (黎智英) has been awarded Deutsche Welle’s (DW) freedom of speech award for his contribution to Hong Kong’s pro-democracy movement. The German public broadcaster on Thursday said Lai would be presented in absentia with the 12th iteration of the award on June 23 at the DW Global Media Forum in Bonn. Deutsche Welle director-general Barbara Massing praised the 78-year-old founder of the now-shuttered news outlet Apple Daily for standing “unwaveringly for press freedom in Hong Kong at great personal risk.” “With Apple Daily, he gave journalists a platform for free reporting and a voice to the democracy movement in
PHILIPPINE COMMITTEE: The head of the committee that made the decision said: ‘If there is nothing to hide, there is no reason to hide, there is no reason to obstruct’ A Philippine congressional committee on Wednesday ruled that there was “probable cause” to impeach Philippine Vice President Sara Duterte after hearing allegations of unexplained wealth, misuse of state funds and threats to have the president assassinated. The unanimous decision of the 53-member committee in the Philippine House of Representatives sends the two impeachment complaints to deliberations and voting by the entire lower chamber, which has more than 300 lawmakers. The complaints centered on Duterte’s alleged illegal use and mishandling of intelligence funds from the vice president’s office, and from her time as education secretary under Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. Duterte and the
Burmese President Min Aung Hlaing yesterday cut all prisoners’ sentences by one-sixth, a blanket measure that a source close to deposed leader Aung San Suu Kyi said would further shorten her detention. Aung San Suu Kyi has been sequestered since a 2021 military coup, but the senior member of her dissolved National League for Democracy (NLD) party said that while her term had been reduced, her remaining sentence is still unclear. “We also don’t know exactly how many years she has left,” the source told reporters, speaking on condition of anonymity for security reasons. The military toppled Aung San Suu Kyi’s elected government
RSS