To prepare for a high-stakes meeting with President Trump, President Lee Jae Myung of South Korea studied “The Art of the Deal.” He also sought advice from Japan’s prime minister, who has held talks with Mr. Trump in the Oval Office and in the Canadian Rockies.
But in the end, it was Mr. Trump’s obsession with personal diplomacy with North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-un, and flattery that helped Mr. Lee sail through his first bilateral meeting with Mr. Trump.
Mr. Trump and Mr. Lee praised each other’s eagerness to engage Mr. Kim in diplomacy — regardless of whether Mr. Kim would ever meet either of them.
The White House meeting on Monday did not produce any significant agreements. Nor did it lead to any confrontation between the two sides.
As long as Mr. Trump did “not publicly criticize South Korea and South Korean people, including Lee Jae Myung,” the meeting would be considered a success in Seoul, said Park Won-gon, a political scientist at Ewha Womans University.
The day began ominously for Mr. Lee and his delegation. Mr. Trump rattled them with a social media post hours before the meeting. “WHAT IS GOING ON IN SOUTH KOREA? Seems like a Purge or Revolution. We can’t have that and do business there,” he wrote.
It was a shock to the visitors, who scrambled to figure out what Mr. Trump’s cryptic posting meant. It turned out that he was channeling a conspiracy theory from the far right in South Korea that accuses Mr. Lee of undermining the alliance with Washington, and persecuting Christian churches.
Mr. Lee left for Washington with a load of thorny issues weighing on him. The two sides still had to agree to the granular details of a trade deal. And Mr. Trump had demanded that South Korea spend more on its own military, pay more for U.S. troops stationed on its soil and buy more American weapons.
Mr. Trump repeated those demands in the Oval Office, but Mr. Lee was quick to heap praise on Mr. Trump. He called him a global peacemaker and stoked his interest in restarting peace talks with Mr. Kim.
“You are the only person who can solve this problem,” Mr. Lee said.
Mr. Trump was only too happy to glorify his earlier diplomacy with Mr. Kim, which collapsed in 2019 without a deal on how to end the North’s nuclear weapons program.
“I will say that Kim Jong-un and I had a very good relationship, as you remember, and still do,” he said. “I look forward to meeting with Kim Jong-un in the appropriate future.”
Mr. Trump repeatedly boasted about his “great relationship” with Mr. Kim and even jokingly offered to set up a meeting between Mr. Kim and Mr. Lee, even though the North has rejected the South’s overtures for talks.
And, to Mr. Lee’s relief, Mr. Trump also backpedaled on his earlier Truth Social posting, calling it based on a misunderstanding and a rumor.
Overall, the meeting showed how foreign governments are preparing for talks by flattering Mr. Trump, who humiliated the leaders of Ukraine and South Africa at the White House earlier this year.
Talks about Mr. Kim continued behind closed doors, said Kang Yu-jung, Mr. Lee’s spokeswoman. Mr. Lee invited Mr. Trump to the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit, which South Korea is hosting in late October, and suggested that Mr. Trump try to meet Mr. Kim during that trip to Korea. Mr. Trump endorsed the idea, Ms. Kang said.
But North Korea has said that although Mr. Kim’s personal relationship with Mr. Trump was “not bad,” it would never re-enter negotiations as long as Washington wants it to give up its nuclear weapons. Since last meeting with Mr. Trump in 2019, Mr. Kim has expanded his nuclear arsenal, and more recently revived a Cold War-era alliance with Russia.
“Kim Jong-un may enjoy being courted by both Trump and Lee and, in time, consent to summitries with Trump and even Lee,” said Sung-Yoon Lee, a senior fellow at the Sejong Institute, a diplomacy research group. “But such talks will not only not yield North Korea’s denuclearization but cement the nation’s nuclear status.”
Mr. Lee, who took office in June, arrived in Washington with South Korean business leaders, who announced $150 billion in investments in the United States. HD Hyundai announced a multi-billion-dollar investment plan to help revitalize the U.S. shipbuilding industry — a pet project of Mr. Trump’s. Korean Air announced its intent to buy 103 Boeing aircraft, worth $36 billion.
While Mr. Lee was traveling to Washington, a South Korean delegation visited China, carrying a letter for its leader, Xi Jinping, in which Mr. Lee expressed hopes for improving ties.
Speaking at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington on Monday evening, Mr. Lee acknowledged that it was getting harder for South Korea to balance relations with the United States, on which it relies for security, and China, which is a big trade partner.
Given the intensifying competition between the superpowers, “it’s no longer possible to maintain that kind of logic,” Mr. Lee said.
Choe Sang-Hun is the lead reporter for The Times in Seoul, covering South and North Korea.
The post South Korea’s Leader and Trump Find Common Ground: Kim Jong-un appeared first on New York Times.
