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Donald Trump reprimanded the South Korea President Lee Jae Myung for hours before he would accommodate the left -wing leader of the country in the White House, which announced tense conversations about the trade and the military presence of the US on the peninsula.
In a social social function, Trump has a clear reference to the political unrest that South Korea has submitted in the past year, including the accusation and arrest of former President Yoon Suk Yeol for trying to impose the state of siege at the end of 2024.
“What is happening in South Korea? Seems a purification or revolution. We can’t have that and doing business there. I see the new president in the White House today. Thank you for your attention for this issue !!!” Trump wrote on Monday.
Speaking with reporters later on Monday, Trump said he had heard about “very cruel raids in churches through the new government in South Korea” who “even went into our military basis and received information”.
“I don’t know if it is true or not,” Trump said, but added that the US will “not be in front of it”.
The threat of the US president to limit commercial ties with his long -standing ally comes just before conversations between Lee and Trump are expected to concentrate on trade.
The two countries agreed last month that Seoul would invest $ 350 billion in the US in exchange for a rate of 15 percent in South Korean import, against the 25 percent levy that Trump had threatened.
But none of the countries have released an official fact sheet in which the conditions of the agreement of 30 July are explained and officials of the two governments have offered considerably different interpretations of what has been agreed.
Trump announced last month’s deal and wrote in a social media post that the $ 350 billion would have been ‘owned and controlled by the US and would be spent according to his personal discretion.
But Lee’s head of policy later informed that direct investments would form a “low portion” of the expenditure, with most funds from loans and guarantees. He also denied claims from high American officials that Seoul had agreed to open politically sensitive beef and rice markets to American exporters.
Yoon, the former South Korean president, was dropped off and suspended from his office in December after he had declared the state of siege and sent troops to storm the national meeting after a budgetary distance with left-wing parties. He was removed from his office in April after a unanimous decision of the Constitutional Court of the Land.
Yoon is now in lonely imprisonment while he ends up on criminal prosecution. But his Hardline supporters have long maintained that his state gambit has been designed to prevent election medel from being in accordance with Noord -Korea and the Chinese Communist Party.
Many have protested with our flags and English-language “Stop the Steal” signing allocation on Trump’s accusations of fraud in the American elections of 2020 that preceded the storming of the American Capitol by his supporters on January 6, 2021-in an attempt to win the US president’s support.
Last month, the South Korean police opened an investigation into Morse Tan, a former American ambassador for worldwide criminal law during the first Trump government, on suspicion of the distribution of conspiracy theories about Lee’s victory in the June presidential elections.
Hak Jo Kim, Minister of Public Affairs at the Embassy of South Korea in Washington, wrote a column last week in the Hill to reject claims that were rejected in the same article by the American commentator Gordon Chang that Lee was “anti-American”.
The Chang column, which also referred to non -substantiated accusations of irregularities during the elections of Lee, presented a “inaccurate and misleading representation” of the country and his alliance with the US, “wrote Kim.
The Minister of Justice Jung Sung-Ho of South Korea also said on Monday that Trump had received ‘distorted information’ about Lee and his left-wing Democratic party of Korea.
In a sign of rocky pre–Summit conversations, the Minister of Foreign Affairs hurried Cho Hyun and Lee the Staff Chef of South Korea, Kang Hoon-Sik, both to Washington last week.
“If meeting another person or make another argument, the other side can help, of course I should go,” Kang told reporters before he flies to the US.
The Trump government wants to focus its military assets in South Korea on China, so Seoul can take more from the burden of North Korea.
The national security adviser of South Korea, Wi Sung-Lac, said last week that his country was willing to increase his defense spending, while Lee also stated his intention for operational control of wartime on the peninsula to be transferred from the US to South Korea by 2030.
