Seoul – The first summit between South Korean President Lee Jae Myung and President Trump was an easy image of chumouble.
On Monday, the two leaders got linked to the fact that they both survived the assassination attempts, and they talked about the golf course. When Trump admired the hand made by hand, Lee is used to sign the guest’s golden book, saying “Is it a pretty pen, want to take it with you?” Lee offered it as an impromptu gift. During a question and answer session in front of the journalists, Lee thanked Trump for bringing peace to the Korean peninsula through his previous summits with the North Korean leader Kim Jong Une and urged him to meet Kim again.
“If you become the peacemaker, then I will help you while being a cardiac stimulator,” Lee told Trump, laughing.
These scenes, as well as the two -hour meeting in camera between the two leaders who followed, seemed to put the fears that Lee – a former governor and legislator having little previous experience on the international scene – could be subjected to a “moment of Zelensky”: cornered and reprimanded by a counterpart who had long complained that Seoul takes Washington to grant.
Karoline Leavitt, press secretary of the White House, holds a commercial letter sent by the White House to South Korea during a press conference. On July 30, the United States concluded a trade agreement with South Korea, but the details were rare.
(Bloomberg / Bloomberg via Getty Images)
It was a result for which South Korea carefully prepared.
As a presidential candidate earlier this year, Lee had promised that he would win a diplomatic victory at all costs, even if it meant that he had to “crawl between Trump’s legs”. To smooth commercial negotiations with the United States at the end of July, South Korean officials brought with them red caps sporting the slogan: “Make America’s naval construction again.” And before the summit on Monday, Lee compared notes with Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba, whom he met last week, and pushed his mission by reading “Trump: the art of agreement”.
So far, these first efforts have apparently borne fruit. The South Korean proposals, such as a 150 billion dollars plan to help revitalize the American naval construction industry, were received favorably, helping to conclude the trade agreement with Washington last month, according to South Korean officials.
“We are going to buy ships in South Korea,” said Trump on Monday. “But we will also make them do ships here with our employees.”
But despite what is widely considered as a positive first step for Lee – establishing face -to -face chemistry with a known figure both for unpredictable oscillations and a deeply personal style of diplomacy – analysts say that it is too early to call it a victory. Several unresolved problems are still looming, and they can still be hampered in details while work level negotiations are taking place.
“In fact, I thought they could be surprisingly getting along because Lee and Trump are not ideologically motivated in their thought and their practice of foreign policy,” said James Park, an expert in East Asia at the Quincy Institute, a Washington -based reflection group.
“But it remains to be seen how their relationship takes place. Should strong tensions emerge on trade and security issues on which the two parties have trouble compromising in the future, the relationship between Lee and Trump will be tested.
Although Trump promised Monday to honor the trade agreement last month – which lowered the rate of price on Seoul to 15%, against 25% – the details were rare and the agreement has not yet been formalized in writing. But the two parties presented it as a victory, leaving room to rekindle longtime disagreements on questions like American rice and beef, which have been the subject of import restrictions in South Korea.
As part of this agreement, South Korea is also committed to investing $ 350 billion in the main American industries. But behind the scenes, those responsible for the two countries would continue to agree on how this fund will be structured or used, US officials seeking much more power than the South Korean team is willing to give.
The soldiers of the US military attend a ceremony for transferring authority to South Korea. In the past, President Trump said South Korea is expected to pay $ 10 billion a year to help maintain the 28,500 American troops stationed in the country.
(Sopa / Sopa Images / Lightrocket images via Getty Images)
The summit has not fully reprimanded South Korean concerns concerning defense and military cooperation.
In the past, Trump said South Korea is expected to pay $ 10 billion a year to help maintain the 28,500 American troops stationed in the country. This is about nine times what Seoul is currently paying under an agreement between the two countries.
While South Korean officials said that the defense cost sharing problem had not been discussed at the summit on Monday, Park said the problem could resurface.
“The alliance’s cost sharing problem has been a constant interest in Trump’s over the years,” he said.
Trump grievances on the cost of parking the US military in South Korea have fueled that the United States will withdraw the troops from its bases here to counter China, which makes the country more vulnerable to Military threats from North Korea.
The scenario has acquired plausibility in recent months, following reports earlier this year that US defense officials were examining a plan to move thousands of American soldiers stationed in South Korea in other Indo-Pacific places, such as Guam.
While any reduction in the size of the troops has long been a political anathema in South Korea, Lee Ho-ryung, principal researcher in Korea in Seoul (Kida), said that it could be less a point of snack for President Lee than history could suggest, citing a speech that the South Korean chief delivered shortly after the summit to which he increase Soul.
“The content of this speech and Q&R suggest that the two parties have somewhat aligned these questions,” she said. “But he will still have to be discussed in more detail in terms of work.”
When he was asked on Monday if he asked if he was planning to reduce the number of American troops in South Korea, Trump died saying, “I don’t want to say that now because we have been friends.”
But then he pivoted another suggestion that brought together the eyebrows in South Korea.
“Perhaps one of the things I would like to do is ask them to give us the property of the field where we have the big fort,” he said. “I would like to see if we could get rid of the lease.”
By virtue of an existing arrangement known as the Agreement on the Statute of Forces (SOFA), South Korea currently grants use without American military rent on the ground where its bases are. Addressing legislators on Tuesday, the South Korean Minister of Defense, Ahn Gyu, briefly rejected the suggestion, suggesting that it was perhaps a negotiation tactic.
“It is impossible in the real world,” he said. “But from President Trump’s point of view, I think it may have been a comment intended to allow him to make a different strategic request.”
Meanwhile, a second series of negotiations with Kim in North Korea would be a victory for the two leaders.
But many experts believe that the window so that North Korea denacle in the terms previously discussed – rescue of partial sanctions – has closed since the failed summits between Trump and Kim in 2018 and 2019. North Korea recently rejected any attempt to convince her to give up her nuclear weapons as “mockery of the other party”.
Personal chemistry between President Lee and Trump cannot go so far this time, explains Lee of Korea Institute for Defense Analysis.
“North Korea actually escapes any economic sanction by Russia and China,” she said. “Repair sanctions are no longer the attractive carrot that it was once.”
