South Korean President Lee Jae Myung said Monday night that his staff “were worried that we might face a 'Zelenskyy moment’” during his first meeting with President Donald Trump at the White House Monday, after Trump raised questions about South Korean democracy on social media earlier in the day.
But Lee said his meeting with Trump turned out “beyond my expectations,” telling an audience at a Washington think tank that he increased his understanding with Trump, received encouragement, and that their meeting went beyond its allotted time.
The new South Korean president, who was elected in June, said he was confident going into the meeting with Trump that he “would not face that kind of a situation” that Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy infamously did earlier this year, when Trump and Vice President JD Vance confronted the Ukrainian leader on live television from the Oval Office. “That’s because I had read President Trump’s book, ‘The Art of the Deal,’” Lee said in remarks at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
Trump had heightened the drama going into the meeting by sharing a post on the social media platform Truth Social Monday morning asking, “WHAT IS GOING ON IN SOUTH KOREA? Seems like a Purge or Revolution. We can’t have that and do business there. I am seeing the new President today at the White House. Thank you for your attention to this matter!!!" He then told the press that he had “heard bad things” about the domestic political situation.
But Lee said Monday night that the two leaders focused their conversation on strengthening the U.S.-South Korea economic ties as well as how to “modernize our bilateral alliance to be more reciprocal and future-oriented in line with the changing security landscape.”
He remained vague on the details, however, of the verbal trade agreement he struck with Trump last month, which set a 15 percent tariff rate on the country’s goods in exchange for a pledge of more than $350 billion in investments and an additional $100 billion in energy purchases.
Trump indicated in the Oval Office Monday that the South Koreans had hoped to renegotiate some of the terms of that trade deal. But later in the afternoon, Trump said the U.S. wouldn’t budge.
“They had some problems with it, but we stuck to our guns,” Trump told reporters. “We are going to, they're going to make the deal that they agreed to make."
Throughout the day, news trickled out of investments that South Korean companies were making in the U.S.
Amazon announced that it would team up with South Korean companies to help launch small nuclear reactors throughout the country with the startup X-energy, in what the companies said would be a $50 billion investment. And Boeing and GE Aerospace signed a $50 billion deal with Korean Air to purchase 103 Boeing aircraft.
Those investment pledges come on top of Lee’s planned visit Tuesday to a shipyard in Philadelphia, which was purchased in December by a South Korean firm. That’s one area where the administration is counting on South Korean investment to help revitalize a U.S. industry that has fallen far below world standards.
“The K-shipbuilding industry, equipped with the world’s strongest capabilities, will bring about a renaissance of the U.S. shipbuilding industry and create a new historic turning point for mutual prosperity,” Lee said Monday night.
Lee also underscored the importance of the U.S.-South Korea military alliance in facing down what he called a growing nuclear weapons threat from North Korea. Lee said that Seoul has no intentions of developing its own nuclear deterrent, but warned that Pyongyang’s drive to develop nuclear warhead-equipped intercontinental ballistic missiles posed a growing international menace. “There is a balance of fear on the Korean peninsula, but the situation is deteriorating,” Lee said.
But, as he courted the mercurial American president, Lee didn’t budge when it came to his country’s ties with China, avoiding any mention of decoupling from the world’s second largest economy and the biggest geopolitical power player in Asia.
“Korea is currently kind of distanced from America's export controls and supply chain controls regarding China,” Lee said. “But because we are geographically very closely located to China, we are maintaining our relationship with China."
Phelim Kine contributed to this report.
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