Trump-Lee Summit Draws Sighs of Relief as Presidents Appear To Be Fast Friends

The once-leftist South Korean president and the peace-seeking American president appear to have gotten along famously at their lengthy summit in the Oval OfficeSouth Korea’s Lee Jae-myung said afterward he went into the session with President Trump “worried we might have a Volodymir Zelensky moment” — a reference to the Ukrainian president’s contentious meeting with Mr. Trump in the same setting in February.Who could blame Mr. Lee for such trepidations after seeing a pre-summit social media post by Mr. Trump saying it looked like a “purge or revolution” was going on in South Korea.It seems the post, if not forgotten, had been discarded as almost an aberration when the two met at the White House.Mr. Lee, talking afterward at Washington’s Center for Strategic and International Studies, said he had read Mr. Trump’s “The Art of the Deal” and realized the president had “a technique for negotiations” in which he “does not come to an irresponsible conclusion.”Much to Mr. Lee’s relief, he had reason to feel “confident he would not inflict a wound in our alliance.”A sense of relief pervaded Korean and American defenders of the historic Korean-American alliance after intense speculation that Messrs. Lee and Trump might disagree on where the relationship was going. Mr. Trump had been expected to demand a vast increase in South Korea’s contribution to the cost of American troops and bases in the country, and Mr. Lee seemed likely to want to downgrade the alliance.Instead, Mr. Lee, with a background as a firebrand leftist politician as a provincial governor and city mayor before his election in May, said he and Mr. Trump had had “a very good conversation” that went “beyond our expectations.” They did not seem to disagree on anything — even after Mr. Lee explained why South Korea has developed close relations with China, the focal point of American concerns in the region.“Before, the United States had a strong position on containing China,” he said, while South Korea “depended on cooperation with the United States.” In recent years, however, “supply chains have changed,” he said. “While the United States is competing in some areas, there are other areas in which the United States is cooperating with China.” Korea, meanwhile, “is distanced from American export controls” and is “maintaining our relationship with China.”The summit was notable, however, for failure to come to any definite agreements. Mr. Trump did not mention his previous demand that South Korea pay as much as $10 billion a year toward the cost of American troops and bases in the country, a number set at $1.1 billion under President Biden. Also, no one talked about withdrawing some of them.Sitting beside Mr. Lee in the Oval Office before their closed-door meeting and luncheon, Mr. Trump did not seem to know the extent of the American commitment. “We have over 40,000 troops in Korea,” he said, when only 28,500 American troops are posted in South Korea, the majority at Camp Humphreys, an American base built on land leased from Korea.Mr. Lee ignored Mr. Trump’s plea for South Korea “to give us ownership of the land where we have a massive military base.” Jokingly, some Koreans compared the idea to Mr. Trump’s calls to take over Greenland and Canada.More urgently, Mr. Lee warned of rising North Korean nuclear strength — a basic reason for the need for the Korean-American alliance.“North Korea is at the final stage of producing ICBMs and is able to produce 10 to 20 nuclear weapons a year,” Mr. Lee said. “We are increasing our defense capabilities by overwhelming conventional weapons, but we do not have nuclear weapons.” His tone assumed urgency: “There is a balance of power on the Korean peninsula. The situation is deteriorating. We should find a realistic way to stop North Korea from producing more nuclear weapons. The situation could become worse.” The inference was clear — all the more reason for dialogue with North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-un. Mr. Kim has said his relationship with Mr. Trump is “not bad” but rejects overtures from the South, viewed as the North’s “enemy.”

Trump-Lee Summit Draws Sighs of Relief as Presidents Appear To Be Fast Friends

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