South Korean President Lee Jae Myung stated Monday evening that his employees “have been fearful that we would face a ‘Zelenskyy second’” throughout his first assembly with President Donald Trump on the White Home Monday, after Trump raised questions on South Korean democracy on social media earlier within the day.
However Lee stated his assembly with Trump turned out “past my expectations,” telling an viewers at a Washington assume tank that he elevated his understanding with Trump, acquired encouragement, and that their assembly went past its allotted time.
The brand new South Korean president, who was elected in June, stated he was assured going into the assembly with Trump that he “wouldn’t face that form of a scenario” that Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy infamously did earlier this 12 months, when Trump and Vice President JD Vance confronted the Ukrainian chief on reside tv from the Oval Workplace. “That’s as a result of I had learn President Trump’s e book, ‘The Artwork of the Deal,’” Lee stated in remarks on the Heart for Strategic and Worldwide Research.
Trump had heightened the drama going into the assembly by sharing a put up on the social media platform Reality Social Monday morning asking, “WHAT IS GOING ON IN SOUTH KOREA? Looks as if a Purge or Revolution. We will’t have that and do enterprise there. I’m seeing the brand new President right now on the White Home. Thanks on your consideration to this matter!!!” He then advised the press that he had “heard unhealthy issues” concerning the home political scenario.
However Lee stated Monday evening that the 2 leaders centered their dialog on strengthening the U.S.-South Korea financial ties in addition to the best way to “modernize our bilateral alliance to be extra reciprocal and future-oriented according to the altering safety panorama.”
He remained obscure on the main points, nevertheless, of the verbal commerce settlement he struck with Trump final month, which set a 15 % tariff price on the nation’s items in alternate for a pledge of greater than $350 billion in investments and a further $100 billion in power purchases.
Trump indicated within the Oval Workplace Monday that the South Koreans had hoped to renegotiate a few of the phrases of that commerce deal. However later within the afternoon, Trump stated the U.S. wouldn’t budge.
“They’d some issues with it, however we caught to our weapons,” Trump advised reporters. “We’re going to, they’re going to make the deal that they agreed to make.”
All through the day, information trickled out of investments that South Korean corporations have been making within the U.S.
Amazon introduced that it could staff up with South Korean corporations to assist launch small nuclear reactors all through the nation with the startup X-energy, in what the businesses stated can be a $50 billion funding. And Boeing and GE Aerospace signed a $50 billion take care of Korean Air to buy 103 Boeing plane.
These funding pledges come on high of Lee’s deliberate go to Tuesday to a shipyard in Philadelphia, which was bought in December by a South Korean agency. That’s one space the place the administration is relying on South Korean funding to assist revitalize a U.S. business that has fallen far beneath world requirements.
“The Okay-shipbuilding business, geared up with the world’s strongest capabilities, will deliver a couple of renaissance of the U.S. shipbuilding business and create a brand new historic turning level for mutual prosperity,” Lee stated Monday evening.
Lee additionally underscored the significance of the U.S.-South Korea navy alliance in dealing with down what he referred to as a rising nuclear weapons menace from North Korea. Lee stated that Seoul has no intentions of growing its personal nuclear deterrent, however warned that Pyongyang’s drive to develop nuclear warhead-equipped intercontinental ballistic missiles posed a rising worldwide menace. “There’s a steadiness of worry on the Korean peninsula, however the scenario is deteriorating,” Lee stated.
However, as he courted the mercurial American president, Lee didn’t budge when it got here to his nation’s ties with China, avoiding any point out of decoupling from the world’s second largest economic system and the most important geopolitical energy participant in Asia.
“Korea is at present form of distanced from America’s export controls and provide chain controls relating to China,” Lee stated. “However as a result of we’re geographically very carefully positioned to China, we’re sustaining our relationship with China.”
Phelim Kine contributed to this report.